
GIass__tl^l4-Z 



Book_J- 



THE PAST, THE PRESENT, 

/7$ 



AND 



^y/ 



THE FUTURE. 



BY 

H. C. CAREY, 

AUTHOR OF "PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL ECONOMY," &c. 



IF ANT MAN WILL DO HIS WILL, HE SHALL KNOW OF THE DOCTRINE, 
WHETHER IT BE OF GOD, OR WHETHER I SPEAK OF MYSELF. 

John vii. 17. 



PHILADELPHIA : 

HENRY CAREY BAIRD. 

18 59. 



rr, 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1847, by 

H. C. CAREY, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. 



STEREOTYPED BY L. JOHNSON AND ca 

PHILADELPHIA. 

PRINTED BY COLLINS. 



PREFACE. 



The volume now offered to the public is designed to 
demonstrate the existence of a simple and beautiful law of 
nature, governing man in all his efforts for the maintenance 
and improvement of his condition, a law so powerful and 
universal that escape from it is impossible, but which, 
nevertheless, has heretofore remained unnoticed. The further 
object of these pages is, by aid of this law, to examine and 
to solve various questions of great interest. In doing this, it 
has been necessary to refer to the history of various nations, 
in order to show that certain causes have invariably produced 
certain effects ; and thus to account for the differences ob- 
servable in their present condition, and in their modes of 
thought and action. If in so doing the author be found to 
have expressed himself strongly in regard to some of the 
nations of Europe, he begs the reader to beHeve that he has 
done so not because he is not of them, but because they are 
not of those who have maintained peace and permitted the 
laws of nature to take effect : and if, on the contrary, he has 
spoken highly of the course pursued by the United States, and 
has placed in a strong point of view the results here realised, 
he begs the reader also to believe that he has done so, not 
merely because he is of them, but because they have, to an 
extent hitherto unprecedented, followed " the things that make 
for peace ;" and because they, less than any other people, have 

1* 5 



6 PREFACE. 

interfered with the great natural laws under which man Hves, 
and moves, and has his being. "God," says the wise man, 
" hath made man upright, but he has sought out many inven- 
tions." We find fewer of these "inventions" in the history 
of the United States than in that of any other nation, and it 
is due to the great cause of Truth and Human Happiness to 
exhibit as strongly as possible the contrast between the unre- 
stricted operation of the laws of God on the one hand, and the 
results of the " inventions" of man, on the other. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Chapter 1. MAN AND LAND 9 

11. MAN AND FOOD 77 

III. WEALTH 94 

IV. WEALTH AND LAND 137 

V. MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE 157 

VL MAN AND HIS FELLOW MAN 213 

VIL MAN 247 

Vm. MAN AND HIS HELPMATE 262 

IX. MAN AND HIS FAMILY 274 

X. CONCENTRATION AND CENTRALIZATION 284 

XL COLONIZATION 315 

XIL IRELAND '. 378 

XIIL INDIA 392 

XIV. ANNEXATION 410 

XV. CIVILIZATION 415 



THE FUTURE 429 

7 



THE LESSON OF THE PAST 



TO 



THE PRESENT. 



CHAPTER I. 

MAN AND LAND. 

The first cultivator, the Robinson Crusoe of his day, 
provided however with a wife, has neither axe nor spade. 
He works alone. Population being small, land is, of 
course, abundant. He may select for himself, without 
fear of his title being disputed. He is surrounded by 
soils possessed, in the highest possible degree, of the 
qualities that fit them for yielding large returns to labour. 
They are, however, covered wdth immense trees that he 
cannot fell, or they are swamps that he cannot drain. 
To pass through them even is attended with no small 
difficulty. The first is a mass of roots, stumps, decay- 
ing logs, and shrubs, while into the other he sinks half 
leg deep at every step. The atmosphere, too, is impure. 
Fogs settle upon the low lands, and the dense foliage 
of the wood prevents the circulation of the air. He has 
no axe, but if he had, he would not venture there, for to 
do so, would be attended with certain loss of health and 
great risk of life. Vegetation, too, is so luxuriant, that 
before he could, with the imperfect machinery at his 
command, clear a single acre, a portion of it would be 
again so overgrown that he would have to recom- 
mence his labour, which would be almost, if not quite, 
that of Sisyphus. The higher lands, comparatively bare 
of timber, are ill calculated to yield a return to his 
B 9 



m> 



10 MAN AND LAND. 

labour. Nevertheless there are spots on the hill where 
the thin soil has prevented the growth of trees and shrubs, 
or there are spaces among the trees, that can be culti- 
vated while they still remain standing, and when he pulls 
up by the roots the few shrubs scattered over the surface, 
he feels no apprehension of their being speedily replaced. 
With his hands he may even succeed in barking the 
trees, or, by the aid of fire, he may so far destroy them 
that time alone is needed to give him a few cleared acres, 
upon which he may plant his grain, with little fear of 
weeds. To attempt these things upon the richer lands 
would be loss of labour. In some places the ground is 
always wet. In others, the trees are too large to be seri- 
ously injured by fire, and its only effect would be to stimu- 
late the growth of weeds and brush. He, therefore, 
commences the work of cultivation far up the hill, where, 
making with his stick holes in the light soil that drains 
itself, he drops the grain an inch or two below the sur- 
face, and in due season obtains a return of double the 
amount of his seed. He pounds this between stones, 
and obtains bread. His condition is improved. He has 
succeeded in making the earth labour for him, while 
himself engaged in trapping rabbits or squirrels, and 
in gathering fruits. In process of time, he succeeds in 
sharpening a stone, and thus obtains a hatchet by aid of 
which he is enabled to proceed more rapidly in girdling 
the trees, and in removing the sprouts and their roots, 
which is nevertheless a very slow and laborious opera- 
tion. At the next step, we find him bringing into acti- 
vity a new soil, whose food-producing powers were less 
obvious to sight than those of that first attempted. He 
finds an ore of copper, and by the aid of some of his 
fallen and decayed timber, succeeds in burning it, and 
thus obtains a better axe, with far less labour than was 
required for the first. He has also something like a spade. 



MAN AND LAND. 11 

He can now make holes four inches deep with less la- 
bour than with his stick he could make those of two. 
He penetrates to a lower soil, and being enabled to stir 
the earth and loosen it, the rain is now absorbed instead 
of running off from the hard ground, and he finds his new 
one far better and more easily worked than that upon 
which he has heretofore wasted his labour. His seed, 
better protected, is less liable to be frozen out in winter, 
or parched in summer, the consequence of which is that 
he gathers thrice the quantity sown. His new soil 
gives him larger returns with less labour. At the next 
step, we find him bringing into action another new soil. 
He has found that which, on burning, yields him zinc, 
and by combining this with his copper he has brass. 
His machinery improves, and he proceeds more rapidly. 
He sinks deeper into the land first occupied, and is en- 
abled to clear other lands upon which vegetation grows 
more luxuriantly, because he can now exterminate the 
shrubs with some hope of occupjdng the land before they 
are replaced with others equally valueless for the sup- 
ply of his wants. His children, too, have grown, and 
they can weed the ground and assist him in removing 
the obstacles by which his progress is impeded. At an- 
other step, we find him burning a piece of the iron soil 
which surrounds him in all directions, and now he is en- 
abled to obtain a real axe and spade, inferior in quality, but 
still much superior to those by which his labour has been 
thus far aided. He next, with the aid of his sons, grown 
to man's estate, removes the light pine of the hill-side, 
leaving still untouched, however, the heavy oak of the 
river bottom. His cultivable ground is increased in ex- 
tent, while he is enabled with his spade to penetrate still 
deeper than before, thus bringing into action the powers 
of the several soils lying within half a dozen inches of the 
surface. He finds, with great pleasure, that the light 



12 MAN AND LAND. 

soil is underlaid with clay, and that by combining the 
two he obtains a new one far more productive than that 
first brought into activity. He finds, too, that by turning 
the top soil down, the process of decomposition is facili- 
tated, and that thus, with each new operation, he receives 
an increasing reward for his labour. His family has in- 
creased, and he has obtained the important advantage 
of combination of exertion. Things that were needed to 
be done to render his land more rapidly productive, but 
which were to one man impracticable, become simple and 
easy when now attempted by himself and his half dozen 
sons, each of whom obtains far more food than he alone 
could at first command, and in return for far less severe 
exertion. He next extends his operations downwards, 
towards the low grounds of the stream, girdling the large 
trees, and burning the brush, and thus facilitating the pas- 
sage of air so as to render the land by degrees fitted for 
occupation. He now finds that his sons can perform all 
the labours of the field, and that by devoting his own at- 
tention to the cultivation of the iron soil, he can render 
more aid, and with less severe labour, than in any other 
manner. He invents a hoe, by means of which his grand- 
children are enabled to keep the ground free from weeds, 
and to tear up some of the roots by which his best lands 
— those last brought into cultivation — are yet infested. 
He has succeeded in taming the ox, but as yet has had 
no use for his services. He now invents the plough, and 
by means of a piece of twisted hide is enabled to attach 
the ox, and to turn up a deeper soil, while extending his 
cultivation over land more distant from the place of his 
first little cabin, on the spot first occupied. His family 
grows, and with it grows his wealth. He has better ma- 
«:hinery, and he has reduced to cultivation more and bet- 
ter lands. Food and clothing are more abundant, and 
the air on the lower lands is improved by the clearing of 



]MAN AND LAND. 13 

the trees. His house, too, is better. In the outset, it was 
a hole in the ground. Afterwards it was composed of such 
decayed logs as his unaided efforts could succeed in roll- 
ing and placing one upon the other. A chimney was an 
unhoped-for luxury, and he must live in perpetual smoke, 
or almost perish of cold. A window was a luxury un- 
thought of. If the severity of the weather required him 
to close his doors, he was stifled with smoke, and he 
passed his days in darkness. His time, therefore, during 
a large portion of the year, was totally unproductive, 
while his life was liable to be shortened by disease pro- 
duced by foul air wdthin, or severe cold without, his 
miserable hut. With increase of population he has ac- 
quired wealth, derived from the cultivation of new and 
better soils ; and he has acquired also the power of com- 
bining his labour with that of others, thus rendering 
that of all more productive. They now fell the heavy 
oak and the enormous pine, and avail themselves thereof 
for the construction of additional houses, each in regular 
succession better than the first. Health improves, and 
population increases more rapidly. Some of the sons 
are now employed in the field, while others prepare the 
skins and render them more fit for clothing : and a third 
set make axes, spades, hoes, ploughs, and other imple- 
ments calculated to aid the labours of the field, and those 
of construction. The supply of food increases rapidly, and 
with it the power of accumulation. In the first years, 
there was perpetual danger of famine. Now, there is a 
surplus, and a part is stored to provide against the dan- 
ger of short crops. Cultivation extends itself along the 
hill-side, where deeper soils now laid open by the plough, 
afford a better return, while down the slope of the hill each 
successive year is marked by the disappearance of the 
great trees by which the richer lands have heretofore been 
occupied, the intermediate spaces becoming meanwhile 

2 



14 MAN AND LAND. 

enriched by the decomposition of the enormous roots, and 
more readily ploughed because of the gradual decay of 
the stumps. A single ox to the plough can now turn up 
a greater space than in the outset could be done by two. 
A single ploughman can now do more than on the grounu 
first cultivated could have been done by a hundred men 
armed with pointed sticks. The family are next enabled 
to drain some of the lower lands, and copious harvests 
of grain are obtained from the new soil now first cultivated. 
The oxen have heretofore roamed the woods, gathering 
what they could. The meadow is now granted to their 
use, the axe and the saw enabling the family to enclose 
them, and thus to lessen the labour attendant upon ob- 
taining supplies of meat, milk, butter and hides. Here- 
tofore their chief domestic animal has been the hog, 
which could live on mast. Now, they add beef, and per- 
haps mutton, the lands first cultivated being abandoned 
to the sheep. They obtain far more meat and grain, and 
with less labour than at any former period, although their 
numbers have so greatly increased. The father and 
grandfather have passed away, and the younger generations 
are now profiting by the wealth they had accumulated, 
while applying their own labour with daily increasing 
advantage : and obtaining a constantly increasing return, 
with increasing power of accumulation, and decreasing 
severity of application. They now bring new powers 
to their aid, and the water no longer is allowed to run 
to waste : the air itself is made to work. Windmills 
grind the grain, and sawmills cut the timber, which dis- 
appears more rapidly, while the work of drainage is in 
course of being improved by more efficient spades and 
ploughs. The little furnace makes its appearance and char- 
coal is now applied to the reduction of the soil yielding 
iron, when it is found that the labour of a single day be- 
comes more productive than was before that of half a dozen. 



MAN AND LAND. 15 

Population spreads itself along the faces of the hills 
and down into the lower lands, becoming more and 
more dense at the seat of the original settlement, and 
with every step we find increasing tendency to com- 
bination of action for the production of food, the manufac- 
ture of clothing and household utensils, the construction 
of houses, and the preparation of machinery for aiding 
in all these operations. The heaviest timber : that grow- 
ing on the most fertile land : now disappears, and the 
deepest marshes are now drained. Roads are next made 
to facilitate the intercourse between the old settlement 
and the newer ones that have been formed around it, and 
to enable the grower of corn to exchange his product for 
improved spades and ploughs, and for clothing and furni- 
ture. Population again increases, and wealth still further 
increases, and therewith man acquires more leisure for 
reflection on the results furnished by the experience of 
himself and his predecessors. His mind becomes more 
and more stimulated into action. The sand in the neigh- 
bourhood is found to be underlaid with marl, and by the 
aid of the improved machinery now in use, the two are 
brought into combination, thereby producing a soil of 
power far exceeding that of those heretofore cultivated. 
The return to labour increases, and all are better fed, and 
clothed, and housed, and all are incited to new exertions, 
while improved health and the power of working in-doors 
and out-of-doors, according to the season, enable them 
to apply their labour more steadily and regularly. Thus 
far, how^ever, they have found it difficult to gather their 
crops in season. The harvest time is short, and the 
whole strength of the community has been found in- 
sufficient to prevent much of the grain remaining on the 
ground until, over ripe, it was shaken out by the wind, 
or in the attempt to gather it : and not unfrequently it has 
been totally rained by changes of weather after it was 



16 MAN AND LAND. 

jfit to be harvested. The progress of cultivation has 
thereby been arrested, and labour has been superabund- 
ant during the year, while harvest produced a demand 
for it that could not be supplied. The reaping-hook 
takes the place of the hand, and the scythe enables the 
farmer to cut his hay. The cradle and the horse-rake 
follow, and all tend to increase the facility of accumula- 
tion, and thus to increase the power of applying labour 
to new soils, deeper or more distant, more heavily bur- 
dened with timber, or more liable to be flooded, and 
thus requiring embankment as well as drainage. New 
combinations, too, are formed. The clay is found to be 
underlaid with the soil called lime, which latter, like the 
iron soil, requires preparation to fit it for the task of com- 
bination. The road, the wagon, and the horse facilitate 
the work, by enabling the farmer readily to obtain sup- 
plies of the carbon-yielding soil, called coal, and he now 
obtains, by burning the lime and combining it with the 
clay, a better soil than at any former period : one that will 
yield more corn, and that requires far less severe labour 
from himself, his oxen, or his horses. Population and 
wealth again increase, and the steam-engine facilitates 
the work of drainage, while the railroad and the engine 
facilitate the transportation to market of his products. 
His cattle are now fattened at home, and a large por- 
tion of the produce of his rich meadow-land is left at 
home, in the form of manure, to be applied to other soils, 
yet found incapable of yielding a return to labour. In- 
stead of sending food to fatten them at market, he now 
obtainsyrom market their refuse in the form of bones, 
and the productiveness of labour is greatly increased. 
Passing thus, at every step, from the poor to the better 
soils, the supply of food, and of all other of the necessa- 
ries of life increases daily, and men consume more, while 
accumulating wealth with constantly increasing rapidity. 



MAN AND LAND. 17 

The danger of famine and disease passes away. In- 
creased returns to labour and daily improving condition 
render labour pleasant, and man applies himself more 
steadily as his work becomes less severe. Population in- 
creases, and the rapidity of its increase is seen to be 
greater with each successive generation; and with each is 
seen an increase of the power of living in connection 
with each other, by reason of the power of obtaining con- 
stantly increasing supplies from the same surface : with 
each is seen an increase in the tendency to combination 
of action, by which their labours are rendered more 
productive — their wants increased — the desire and the 
facilities of commerce augmented: tending to produce 
harmony and peace, and security of person and property 
among themselves, and with the world : accompanied by 
constant increase of numbers, wealth, prosperity and 
happiness. 



Nearly forty years have elapsed since Mr. Ricardo 
communicated to the world his discovery of the nature 
and causes of rent, and of the law of its progress. The 
work by means of which it was first made known has since 
been the text-book of that portion of the English com- 
munity, who style themselves, par excellence, political 
economists, and any thing short of absolute faith in its 
contents is regarded as heresy, worthy of excommunica- 
tion, or as evidence of an incapacity to comprehend them, 
worthy only of contempt. Nevertheless, imitating in this 
the action of the followers of Mahomet, in regard to the Ko- 
ran, the professors, one and all, who have undertaken to 
teach this doctrine, insist upon construing it after their 
own fashion, and modifying it to suit their own views 
and the apparent necessities of the case ; the consequence 
C 2* 



18 - MAN AND LAND. 

of which is, that the inquirer is at a loss to determine 
what it is that he is required to believe. Having studied 
careMly the works of the most eminent of the recent 
writers on the subject, and having found no two of them 
to agree, he turns, in despair, to Mr. Ricardo himself, 
and there he finds, in the celebrated chapter on rent, con- 
tradictions that cannot be reconciled, and a series of com- 
plications such as never before, as we believe, was found 
in the same number of lines. The more he studies, the 
more he is puzzled, and the less difficulty does he find in 
accounting for the variety of doctrines taught by men 
who profess to belong to the same school, and who all 
agree, if in little else, in regarding the new theory of 
rent as the great discovery of the age. 

In looking round, he sees that all the recognised laws 
of nature are characterized by the most perfect simpli- 
city, and the greatest breadth. He sees that they are of 
universal application, and that those by whom they are 
taught are freed from any necessity for resorting to nar- 
row exceptions to account for particular facts. The sim- 
plicity of Kepler's law of 'equal areas in equal times' is 
perfect. Its truth is universal, and all to whom it is ex- 
plained feel assured not only that it is true, but that it 
must continue to be so in relation to all the planets that 
may be discovered, numerous though they may be, and 
however distant from the sun and from us. A child may 
comprehend it, and the merest novice may make himself 
so fully master of it as to enable him to teach it to others. 
It needs no commentary, no modification. Such is not 
the case with the law to which we now desire to call the 
attention of our readers. Whatever else may be its me- 
rits, it cannot be charged with either simplicity or uni- 
versality. 

At first sight, it looks, however, to be exceedingly 
simrtle. Rent is said to be paid for land of the first 



MAN AND LAND. 19 

quality, yielding one hundred quarters in return to a given 
quantity of labour, when it becomes necessary, with the 
increase of population, to cultivate land of the second 
quality, capable of yielding but ninety quarters in re- 
turn to the same quantity of labour: and the amount of 
rent then paid for No. 1 is equal to the difference 
between their respective products. No proposition 
could be calculated to command more universal as- 
sent. Every man who hears it sees around him land 
that pays rent. He sees that that which yields forty 
bushels to the acre pays more rent than that which yields 
but thirty, and that the difference is nearly equal to the 
difference of product. He becomes at once a disciple 
of Mr. Ricardo, admitting that the reason why prices are 
paid for the use of land is that soils are different in their 
qualities, when he would, at the same moment, regard it 
as in the highest degree absurd if any one were to un- 
dertake to prove that prices are paid for oxen because one 
ox is heavier than another : that rents are paid for houses 
because some will accommodate twenty persons and 
others only ten : or that all ships command freights be- 
cause some ships differ from others in their capacity. 

A certain portion of the world now thinks that it sees 
in this difference in the qualities of soils the reason why 
rent is paid for any soils. It is not a very large portion, 
for the theory has made but little way out of England. 
It is taught by a few in France, and by some in Ame- 
rica, but elsewhere, it has, we believe, made no progress 
whatsoever, which would certainly not have been the case 
had it been, like other of the laws of nature, charac- 
terized by that simphcity which is essential to universality 
of application. 

In former times it was obvious to the whole world that 
the earth remained unmoved, and that the sun performed 
a daily revolution around it. It was not to be doubted 



20 MAN AND LAND. 

that such was the case, but if any one so far ventured, 
he was referred to the Scriptures for unquestionable evi- 
dence of the fact. Careful observers, however, detected 
numerous other facts whose existence was incompatible 
with that of the one great and universally admitted fact. 
Further observation confirmed them in the doubts thus 
raised, and it was found, at length, that, patch the Ptole- 
maic theory as its professors might, it could not be made 
to cover facts whose existence was undeniable. It was 
too long for some, and too short for others. To disbelieve 
it, however, was rank heresy, worthy not only of excom- 
munication, but of punishment by fire. Copernicus never- 
theless dared to declare his disbelief, and to proclaim to the 
world that the sun stood still, and that the earth it was 
that moved. Persecution embittered the remaining years 
of his life, and his disciple Galileo was compelled, on his 
knees, to recant his declaration of belief in the monstrous 
doctrine, yet the whole civilized world now unites with 
him in the assertion that " still it moves." 

The doctrine of Mr. Ricardo has, in like manner, been 
found quite too long for some facts, and as much too short 
for many others, and hence the numerous modifications 
it has undergone.* Every new teacher tries to stretch it 

* Among the earliest and most distinguished of the advocates of Mr. 
Ricardo's doctrine was the author of the Templar's Dialogues. In a recent 
work by the same author we find the following passage : — 

" The tendencies of a natural law like that of rent it is always right to 
expose, and Ricardo first did expose them. Others had discovered the 
law ; he first applied his sagacious sense to its consequences upon pro- 
fits, wages, price ; and through them upon universal economy. That 
was right; for that we are irredeemably his debtors. But it was not 
right to keep studiously out of sight that eternal counter-movement which 
tends, by an equivalent agenc}'-, to redress the disturbed balance. This 
concealment has had the effect of introducing marvels into a severe sci- 
ence ; since else, what other than a miracle is it that rent has not long 
since absorbed the whole landed produce — a result to which it so mani- 
festly tends. * * * Our own social system seems to harbour within 
itself the germ of ruin. Either we must destroy rent, i. e. that which causes 
rent, or rent will destroy us," &c. — -Logic of Political Economy, p. 190. 



MAN AND LAND. 21 

in the direction necessary to cover some well-observed 
fact, the consequence of which is, that others are left un- 
covered. In the effort to conceal the head and arms, the 
feet are exposed, and when the cloak is stretched so as 
to cover the feet and head, the arms present themselves 
to view. Such precisely was the case with the system 
of Ptolemy. It was neither broad nor simple. It was 
based on a few facts, omitting all reference to a thousand 
others, and hence its downfall, the necessary consequence 
of its untruth. 

Proposing, as we do, to submit some views in opposi- 
tion to this doctrine of the cause of rent, we would beg 
leave respectfully to suggest to the disciples of Mr. Ri- 
cardo, into whose hands this volume may chance to 
fall, that their confidence in its truth is not greater than 
was that of the followers of Ptolemy : that the evidence 
of the great fact upon which it rests is not as obvious as 
was that of the revolution of the sun; nor the belief 
therein quite as universal : that as Ptolemy was ultimate- 
ly proved to be in error, so may Mr. Ricardo, at some 
time, be : and that it is, therefore, within the bounds of 
possibility that it may not be an entire waste of time to 
read the brief examination of their favourite system that 
we shall now offer for their consideration. 

That theory, in its simplest form, is contained in the 
following propositions : — 

First : That in the commencement of cultivation, when 
population is small and land consequently abundant, 



Mr. Ricardo taught that as population increased, the return to labour 
diminished, and the power of accumulation became less. Mr. De 
Quincey would have had him teach that as population increased, the 
power of accumulation also increased, and that by aid of the capital ac- 
cumulated, the return to labour increased. Mr. Ricardo did not conceal 
this. He did not see it. Mr. De Quincey does see it, and a very little 
reflection will satisfy him that the facts and the theory are totally incon- 
sistent with each other. 



22 MAN AND LAND. 

the best soils : those capable of yielding the largest re- 
turn, say one hundred quarters, to a given quantity of 
labour : alone are cultivated. 

Second : That with the progress of population, land be 
comes less abundant, and there arises a necessity for cul- 
tivating that yielding a smaller return; and that resort is 
then had to a second, and afterwards to a third and a 
fourth class of soils, yielding respectively ninety, eighty 
and seventy quarters to the same quantity of labour. 

Third : That with the necessity for applying labour 
less productively, which thus accompanies the growth of 
population, rent arises : the owner of land No. 1 being 
enabled to demand and to obtain, in return for its use, ten 
quarters, when resort is had to that of second quality : 
twenty when No. 3 is brought into use, and thirty when 
it becomes necessary to cultivate No. 4. 

Fourth: That the proportion of the landlord tends 
thus steadily to increase as the productiveness of labour 
decreases, the division being as follows, to wit : — 

Total. Labour. Rent. 

At the first period, when No. 1 alone is cultivated 100 100 00 

« second period " No. 1 and 2 are cultivated 190 180 10 

« third period « No. 1,2 and 3 « 270 240 30 

« fourth period « No. 1,2, 3 and 4 « 340 280 60 

« fifth period " No. 1,2, 3,4, and 5 « 400 300 100 

« sixth period « No. 1,2, .3, 4, 5 and 6 « 450 300 150 

« seventh period" No. 1,2,3,4, 5, 6 and 7 " 490 280 210 

and that there is thus a tendency to the ultimate absorption 
of the whole produce by the owner of the land, and to 
a steadily increasing inequality of condition : the power of 
the labourer to consume the commodities which he pro- 
duces steadily diminishing, while that of the landowner 
to claim them, as rent, is steadily increasing. 

Fifth : That this tendency towards a diminution in the 
return of labour, and towards an increase of the land- 
lord's proportion, alw^ays exists where population in- 
creases: and most exists where population increases most 



MA?f AND LAND. 23 

rapidly: but is in a certain degree counteracted by 
increase of wealth, producing improvement of culti- 
vation. 

Sixth : That every such improvement tends to retard 
the growth of rents, while every obstacle to improvement 
tends to increase that growth : and that, therefore, the 
interests of the landowner and labourer are always op- 
posed to each other, rents rising as labour falls, and vice 
versa. 

We hope that this statement of the theory will be 
deemed by its advocates unexceptionable. We desire to 
state it with perfect fairness, but we know of few things 
more difficult, because of the numerous exceptions and 
modifications that have been required to make it fit 
the facts. So difficult, notwithstanding, has the opera- 
tion of fitting been found, that some of its most distin- 
guished advocates have seemed much disposed to think 
the fault is in the facts themselves.* , 

It will be perceived that the whole system is based 
upon the assertion of the existence of a single fact, viz., 
that in the commencement of cultivation, when popula- 
tion is small, and land consequently abundant, the soils 
capable of yielding the largest return to any given quan- 
tity of labour alone are cultivated. That fact exists, or 
it does not. If it has no existence, the system falls 
to the ground. That it does not exist ; that it never has 
existed in any country whatsoever ; and that it is con- 
trary to the nature of things that it should have existed, 
or can exist, we propose now to show. 

* " The one [the practical man] draws his notion of the universe from 
the few objects which compose the furniture of his counting-house ; the 
other [the philosopher] having got demonstration on his side, and forget- 
ting that it is only a demonstration nisi — a proof at all times liable to be 
set aside by the addition of a single new fact to the hypothesis — denies 
instead of examining and sifting the allegations which are opposed to 
him."— 7. S. Mill 



24 MAN AND LAND. 

The picture presented by the theory differs materially 
from that which we have offered to the consideration of the 
reader. Mr. Ricardo places his settler on the best lands, 
and the children of that settler on those which are inferior. 
He makes man the victim of a sad necessity, increasing 
with his numbers, whereas, we have shown him exer- 
cising constantly increasing power, derived from com- 
bined exertion by those numbers. He had never w^it- 
nessed, as at this moment we do from the window at 
which we write, the progress of a nev/ settlement. Had 
he done so, we doubt not his strong mind would have 
enabled him to study out the true cause of rent, and the 
law of its progress and decline. We propose now to 
show that in every part of the world, and in every age, 
the order of events has been such as we have stated it 
to be, and if this can be done to the satisfaction of our 
readers, it will be obvious that the theory of Mr. Ricar- 
do has no foundation. It rests on the assumption of a 
single and simple fact, and if that fact can be shown to 
have no existence, the system must be abandoned, and 
we must seek elsewhere for the cause of rent : and it may 
prove that we shall find the law of its progress to be di- 
rectly the reverse of what it is, by many, supposed to be. 
"We shall commence our examination with the United 
States. Their first settlement is recent, and the work 
being still in progress, we can readily trace the settler, 
and mark his course of operation. If we find him inva- 
riably occupying the high and thin lands requring little 
clearing and no drainage : those which can yield but a 
small return to labour : and as invariably travelling down 
the hills and clearing and draining the lower and richer 
lands, as population and wealth increase : then will the 
theory we have offered be confirmed by practice : Ame- 
rican practice at least. If, how^ever, we can thence fol- 
low him into Mexico, and through South America ; into 



MAN AND LAND. 25 

Britain, and through France, Germany, Italy, Greece 
and Egypt, into Asia and Australia, and show that such 
has been his invariable course of action, then may it be 
believed that when population is small, and land conse- 
quently abundant, the work of cultivation is, and always 
must be, commenced upon the poorer soils : that with 
the growth of population and wealth, other soils, yield- 
ing a larger return to labour, are always brought into ac- 
tivity, with a constantly increasing return to the labour 
expended upon them : and that with this change there 
is a steady diminution in the proportion of the population 
required for producing the means of subsistence, and as 
steady an increase in the proportion that may apply them- 
selves to producing the other comforts, conveniences 
and luxuries of life. 

The first settlers of the English race are found esta- 
blishing themselves on the barren soil of Massachusetts, and 
founding the colony of Plymouth. The whole continent 
was before them, but, like all other colonists, they had 
to take what, with their means, they could obtain. Other 
settlements are formed at Newport and New Haven, and 
thence they may be traced, following the courses of the 
rivers but occupying in all cases the higher lands, leav- 
ing the clearing of timber and the draining of swamps 
to their more wealthy successors. Were the reader de- 
sired to designate the soils of the Union least calculated 
for the production of food, his choice would, we think, 
fall upon the rocky lands first occupied by the hardy Pu- 
ritans, and thus we find that here at least the most fertile 
lands are not first taken into cultivation. If we look to 
New York the process is the same. The unproductive 
soil of the island of New York, and the opposite shore of 
New Jersey, and the higher lands on Long Island, claimed 
early attention, while the more productive soils came later 
into cultivation. Here, f^oram, we find population spread- 
D ' ^ 3 



26 MAN AND LAND. 

ing and following the course of the Hudson towards the 
Mohawk, but in all cases it will be found keeping 
the higher and drier lands, away from the river bank. 
The settlers desire food, and if they undertake to cleai 
the forests and drain the meadows, they must starve. In 
New Jersey we find them occupying the higher lands to- 
wards the heads of the rivers, while neglecting the lower 
grounds that require drainage.* That state still abounds 
in fine timber that covers rich lands, which need only to 
be cleared to yield larger returns to labour than any of 
those cultivated a hundred years since, when land was far 
more abundant than now. On the shores of the Dela- 
ware, we find the Quakers selecting the light lands that 
produce the pine: and that, even now, with the aid of 
manure, will scarcely produce wheat : while forests of 
oak still cover the opposite shore of Pennsylvania. 
Every settler selects, too, the higher and drier parts 
of his farm, leaving the meadows, many of which have 
remained until now in a state of nature, while others 
have been drained within the last five years. The best 
portions of every farm are, invariably, those which have 
been most recently brought into cultivation, w^hile the 
poorest lands of the various neighbourhoods are always 
those on which are seen the oldest farm-houses. If we 
pass further through the sandy lands of New Jersey, we 
shall find hundreds of little clearings more than half a 
century old, long since abandoned by their owners, who 
have left behind their little orchards and other evidences 
of their existence, to attest the character of the soil that 
men cultivate when population is small, and fertile land 
most abundant. Having cleared the lands that produce 
the oak, or drained those which yield the white-cedar, 



• The reader may see this by reference to the map of East Jersey in 
1682, recently republished. 



MAN AND LAND. B7 

they abandon those which produce the pine of that state, 
the poorest of ail pines. The Swedes settle Lewistown 
and Christiana, on the sandy soil of Delaware. Crossing 
that state towards the head of Chesapeake Ba}^, we find in 
the little and decaying towns of Elkton and Charlestown, 
once the centres of a somewhat active population, further 
evidence of the poverty of the soils first occupied, when fine 
meadow-land, on which are now the richest farms in that 
state, was abundant, but held as worthless. Penn follows the 
Swedes, and profits by their expenditure and experience. 
He first selects the high lands on the Delaware, about 
twelve miles north of the site which he afterwards chooses 
for his city, near the confluence of the Delaware and Schuyl- 
kill. Starting from this latter point, and tracing the course 
of settlement, we find it not at first extending downwards 
towards the rich meadow-lands, but upwards along the 
ridge between the two rivers, where the village of German- 
town, which half a century since exceeded three miles in 
length, and was for a village very closely built, remains to mark 
the tendencies of early colonists. If, now, we pass, right or 
lefi:, to the river banks, we shall see, in the character of the 
buildings, evidences of later occupation and cultivation. 
If further evidence be desired, and we look to the maps 
of that early day, w^e find the fertile lands in the vicinity of 
the Delaware, from New Castle almost to the head of tide- 
water, a distance of more than sixty miles, marked as held 
in large tracts, and dotted over with trees, to show that they 
are still uncleared, while all the upper lands are divided into 
small farms.* Passing northward and westward, and keep- 
ing near the Schuylkill, we see the oldest habitations always 
most distant from the river ; but later times, and increase of 
population and wealth, have carried cultivation to the water's 
edge. With every additional mile, we find stronger evi- 
dence of the recent cultivation of the best soils. The original 

* See Holmes's Map, published in 1681, and recently republished. 



28 MAN AND LAND. 

timber still stands on beautiful meadow-land. The trees ana 
shrubs in and near the fence rows on the lower lands become 
more abundant. The valleys in the rolls of the hills, a little dis- 
tant from the river, become studded with trees. The lowest 
ground in the meadow- field, from time immemorial a ditch 
in which leaves have rotted, remains in a state of nature, 
from want of drainage. The banks of the little tributaries 
of the river become more and more wild. Long strips of 
meadow land are met waiting for embankment. Cows are 
seen pasturing in fields the character of whose vegetation 
shows that the operations of the owner have been limited to 
clearing and enclosing them, and that a proper system of 
drainage is, as yet, unthought of. Little islands appear, ca- 
pable of yielding a large return to labour, but as yet co- 
vered with weeds and shrubs. Everywhere around we see 
the higher lands in a high state of cultivation, and affording 
proof of the length of time that has elapsed since they 
were cleared. Arriving in the vicinity of Reading, we see 
in lands abandoned, evidence of the want of fertility in 
the soils first cultivated, and other evidence of the supe- 
riority of the new soils now coming into activity, in the 
fine fields that have been restored by combining the inferior 
lime with the superior clay. In our further progress up the 
river we meet, at every step, farms on the hillsides, while 
the lower lands become more and more wild and rough. 
Patches of wood standing thereon are now of frequent oc- 
currence, while the stumps in others attest the recent date of 
their subjugation to the plough : and finer crops standing 
among the stumps equally attest the superiority of this soil 
to that of the long-cleared dry land of the hills, first culti- 
vated. The rough and undrained land nearest the river 
will, with increased population and wealth, furnish fine mea- 
dows, but in its present state is of small value. Further 
on, cultivation almost leaves the river bank, and if we 
would seek it we must pass outward, where, at the distance 
of half a mile or more, we may find farms half a cen- 



MAN AND LAND. 29 

tury old. If we travel up the little stream that leads to 
Orwigsburg, the seat of justice for Schuylkill county, we 
shall find a beautiful valley with the hill-sides cleared to the 
top, while below, the rivulet meanders through patches of 
wood-land, and the flat is interspersed with remnants of 
the timber that originally covered the whole : the inter- 
mediate spaces being frequently occupied by fields the 
date of whose clearing may readily be determined by the 
greater or less decay of the stumps with which they are 
in part covered. If now we follow the old road, wind- 
ing about, apparently in search of hills to cross, and in 
quire the cause of thus lengthening the distance, we find 
that it was made to suit the early settlers : but if we fol- 
low the new roads, we find them keeping near the stream, 
on the low and rich lands last cultivated. Returning to the 
river and passing on our course, the trees become more and 
more numerous, and the meadow-land less and less drained 
or occupied ; and at length, as we pass up the little branches 
of the river, cultivation disappears, and the original woods 
remain untouched, except so far as the wants of the recently 
established coal trade have tended to their extermination. 
If we desire to see the land chosen by the early settlers, we 
have but to ascend the hill-side, and on the flat above will 
be found houses and farms, some of them half a century old,* 
many of which are now abandoned. If, passing northward 
from the river, we trace its little tributary, Mill Creek, to its 
source, we see miles of fine meadow-land, still covered with 
the original timber, with but here and there a patch of 
cleared land : while on the hill-sides may be seen occasional 
little farms, the houses on which bear every mark of considera- 
ble age. Arriving at the little town of St. Clair, the site of 
which three years since was covered with timber growing 
on land fitted to make the finest meadow^s, but much of it 
then a mere marsh, we see, far up the hill, the residence of the 
first owner of this large body of fertile land, and may judge 
for ourselves the original character of the soil selected fo* 



30 MAN AND LAND. 

cultivation from the small pines and hemlocks on that imme- 
diately adjacent ; and yet the style of the house proves him 
to have been of the better class of the settlers of half a cen- 
tury past, when population was thin, and good land abundant, 
but wealth scarce. Crossing Broad and Locust mountains, 
we see near their tops the habitations of early settlers, w^ho 
selected the land of the pine, easily cleared, and whose 
pine-knots afforded at one time tar, and at another, substi- 
tutes for candles that they were too poor to buy. Immedi- 
ately afterwards we find ourselves in the valley of the Sus- 
quehanna, on meadow-lands whose character is proved by 
the great size of the timber by which they are covered : but 
upon which neither the spade nor the plough has yet made 
its mark. Passing onward, we meet a row of small farms 
occupying a ridge between the mountains, while below them, 
distant two or three hundred yards, the little stream runs 
through fine white-oak timber lands, upon which the axe 
has scarcely yet been heard. Good land thus abounds, but 
the settler prefers that which will yield the largest return to 
labour, which the richer lands would not, as the cost of clear- 
ing them would be more than they were worth w^hen cleared. 
Descending the little stream, we reach the Susquehanna, and 
with every step of our progress, we find cultivation descend- 
ing the hills. The valleys become more cleared of timber, 
and meadows and cattle appear, the most certain signs of 
increasing population and wealth. 

Passing up the west branch of the Susquehanna, the order 
is again inverted. Population diminishes, and cultivation 
tends to leave the river bottom, and to ascend the hill-sides. 
Arriving in the vicinity of Muncy, if, leaving the river and 
ascending the bank, we pass to the foot of the Muncy hills, 
our road will cross fine limestone land whose food-produc- 
ing qualities being less obvious to the early settlers, whole 
tracts of it, containing hundreds of acres, passed from hand 
to hand in exchange for a dollar, or even a jug of whiskey. 
They preferred the oak-producing soils, whose trees they could 



MAN AND LAND. 31 

girdle, and afterwards destroy by fire. With increasing po- 
pulation and wealth, we find them returning to the lands at 
first despised, combining the inferior and superior soils, and 
obtaining greatly increased returns to labour. If now we 
could take a bird's-eye view of the country, we might trace 
with perfect accuracy the course of every little stream, by 
the timber still standing on its banks, conspicuous among 
the higher and* cleared lands of the neighbourhood. Passing 
again up the river, we find the timber in the low lands increas- 
ing in quantity, and if we desire to see cultivation we must seek 
it at the head-waters of the Bald Eagle, in the county of Centre : 
or we may pass up the Sinnemahoning, amid tens of thou- 
sands of acres of timber, much of which would yield, as 
we are assured, a hundred thousand feet of lumber to the 
acre, which yet have felt no implement but the axe of the 
lumberman. So nearly valueless are the fertile soils which 
produce these fine trees, that we have just now heard of the 
sale of two thousand acres, estimated to average thirty thou- 
sand feet to the acre : the whole for the sum of $1250 — or 
£260. Attaining the head of the stream, we find ourselves 
again in the midst of cultivation, and see that the settlers 
here, as everywhere else, have selected the high and dry 
lands upon which they might commence with the plough, in 
preference to the more fertile soils that required the axe. If, 
instead of turning southward towards Clearfield, we advance 
northward to the newly settled counties of Potter, McKean 
and Tioga, we find the centre of population of each occu- 
pying the highest lands, near the head of the several little 
streams w^hich there take their rise. If, passing westward, 
we cross the ridge of the Alleghany to the head-waters of 
the Ohio, we find again the order of things inverted. Popu- 
lation at first is scattered, and occupies the higher lands, and 
the best timber is still standing : but as we descend the river, 
population and wealth gradually increase, the lower lands 
become more and more cleared, and at length we find our- 
selves at Pittsburgh, in the midst of a dense population, 



32 MAN AND LAND. 

actively employed in bringing into connection the several 
soils containing carbon, lime, and iron, with a view to the 
preparation of machinery to enable the farmer of the west 
to sink deeply into the land of which heretofore he has but 
scratched the superficial soil, and to clear and drain the fer- 
tile soils of the river bottoms, instead of the higher and 
drier lands from which he has heretofore derived his sup- 
plies of food. 

The early settlers of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, uniformly 
selected the higher grounds, leaving the richer lands for their 
successors. The immediate valleys of streams, fertile a? 
were the soils, were and still are avoided on account of dan- 
ger to be apprehended from the fevers which even now sweep 
off so many of the emigrants to the new states. The faci- 
lity of getting some small crop always prompted, as it still 
prompts, to the selection of the land which was most readily 
brought into cultivation: and none so well answered the par- 
pose as that which was slightly clothed with timber, and 
clear of undergrowth. The constant fall of leaves had by 
their decay kept the ground covered with a light mould, and 
prevented the growth of grass : and by deadening the trees 
to let in the sun, they could obtain a small return to labour. 
The first great object was to have a dry place for the dwell- 
ing. Land which is entirely covered with timber has very 
imperfect drainage, and therefore the settler was found always 
selecting dry ridges of land on which to begin the work of 
cultivation ; for the same reason which prevented him from 
commencing the work of artificial drainage to secure a place 
for his dwelling equally prevented him from so doing for any 
other purpose. 

In the prairies, the richest land is found in the centre 
of the prairie, and there can water be most readily ob- 
tained ; while on the outer edges, as the surface descends 
towards the timbered land, it is less healthful, and water 
is obtained only by boring to a considerable depth, while 
the soil is far less rich : yet here invariably does the settler 



MAN AND LAND. 



commence, as the centre requires drainage, and three or four 
yoke of oxen to break up the tough sod. With each step in 
the progress of wealth and population, the new settlers are 
seen approaching nearer to the centre and obtaining better 
soils at less cost of labour. While thus passing inward to- 
wards richer portions of the prairie, others gradually make 
their way down to the lower lands near the margins of the 
streams, but for want of drainage these are frequently over- 
flowed, and then the labour is in a great measure lost. 

Descending the river from Pittsburgh, we reach the con- 
fluence of the Ohio and Mississippi, where we lose sight of 
all signs of population, except that of the poor wood-cutter, 
who risks his health while engaged in providing wood for 
the numerous steamboats. Here, for hundreds of miles, we 
pass through the most fertile land, covered with timber of 
gigantic size. With all its powers of production, it is value- 
less for all purposes of cultivation. Unembanked, it is lia- 
ble to occasional overflow from the river, and its neighbour- 
hood is destructive to life and health : for which reason hun- 
dreds of thousands of acres that, w^hen population and wealth 
shall have further increased, will yield the largest return to 
labour, remain uncleared and undrained : while the hiofher 
lands, whose "original and indestructible powers" are less, 
are in a state of cultivation. Descending further, we meet 
population and wealth in the act of ascending the Missis- 
sippi, from the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. Embank- 
ments, or levees, keep out the river, and the finest planta- 
tions are seen on land corresponding in every respect with 
the wild and uncultivated region through which we have just 
passed. If, now, we desire to seek the habitations of the early 
settlers, we must leave the river bank and ascend the hills, 
and with every step we shall find new proof that cultivation 
invariably commences on the poorer soils. If we interrogate 
the pioneer settlers why they waste their labour on the poor 
soil of the hill-tops, while fertile soils abound, their answer 
vdll invariably be found to be, that the one they can cultivate 
E 



34 MAN AND LAND. 

as it stands, while the other they cannot. The pine of the 
hills is small, and easily cleared. It gives them good fuel, 
and its knots furnish artificial light. To attempt to clear the 
land that bears the oakwould ruin them. If, instead of de- 
scending the Mississippi, we ascend the Missouri, the Ken- 
tucky, the Tennessee, or the Red River, we find invariably 
that the more dense the population and the greater the mass 
of wealth, the more are the good soils cultivated : and that 
as population diminishes with our approach to their head- 
waters, and as land becomes more abundant, cultivation re- 
cedes from the river banks, the timber and the undrained 
meadow-lands increase in quantity, and the scattered inha- 
bitants are seen obtaining from the superficial soils a dimi- 
nishing return to their labour, accompanied with diminish- 
ing power to command the necessaries, conveniences, and 
comforts of life. If we cross the Mississippi into Texas, and 
mark the site of the town of Austin, the centre of the first 
American settlement, we find it to have been placed high 
up on the Colorado, while millions of acres of the finest tim- 
ber and meadow lands in the world, totally unoccupied, 
were passed over, as incapable of paying the cost of simple 
appropriation. If we look to the Spanish colony of Bexar, 
we find further illustration of the same universal fact. The 
whole tendency of colonization is towards the head-waters of 
the rivers. 

We know of no exception to ^he rule, and we feel assured 
that none exists, or can exist. That it should do so, would 
be contrary to the laws of nature. The same reason that 
prompts the settler to build himself a log-house, to provide 
shelter while waiting until he can have one of stone, equally 
prompts him to begin cultivation where he can use his plough, 
and not to risk the starvation of his family by endeavouring 
to do so w^here he cannot: and where fevers, perhaps to be fol- 
lowed by death, would be the inevitable result of the attempt. 
In every case on record, in which settlements have been at. 
tempted on rich lands, they have either failed totally, or 



MAN AND LAND. 35 

their progress has been slow, and it has been only after re- 
peated efforts that they have thriven. The reader who de- 
sires evidence of this fact, and of the absolute necessity for 
commencing with the poorer soils, will obtain it if he 
study the history of the French colonies in Louisiana and 
Cayenne, and compare their repeated failures with the steady 
growth of those formed in the region of the St. Lawrence, 
where numerous and. somewhat prosperous settlements were 
formed at places where the land is now held to be almost utterly 
valueless, because better soils can be obtained elsewhere, by 
sinking deeper into the earth, or removing to a little distance. 
He may obtain additional evidence, if he will compare the' 
gentle, but steady, growth of the colonies planted on the 
sterile soils of New England, with the repeated failures of 
colonization upon the richer lands of Virginia and Carolina, 
which latter could not be reduced to cultivation by men 
working for themselves ; and hence we find the richer colonists 
purchasing negroes, and compelling them to perform the 
work, while the free labourer seeks the light sandy lands of 
North Carolina. Slavery would never have existed there 
could free labourers have been obtained, but no man, left to 
himself, will commence the work of cultivation on the rich 
soils : because it is from those soils that the return is then 
least, and it is upon them, throughout all the new countries 
of the world, that the condition of the labourer is the worst, 
where the work is undertaken in advance of the wealth and 
combination that come, or ought to come, with time. The 
settler who sought the high light lands obtained food, although 
the return to his labour was small. Had he undertaken to 
drain the rich soils of the Dismal Swamp, he would have 
starved, as did those who settled the fertile island of Roanoke. 
If the reader will now cross with us the Rio Grande, into 
Mexico, he may find further illustration of the universality 
of this law. At his left, near the mouth of the river, but at 
some distance from its bank, he will see the city of Mata- 
moras, of recent date. Starting from that point, he may fol- 



36 MAN AND LAND. 

low the river through vast bodies of fine lands in a state of 
nature, with here and there a scattered settlement occupying 
the higher ones, to the mouth of the San Juan, follow- 
ing which to its source, he will find himself in a somewhat 
populous country, of which Monterey is the centre. If, 
standing here, he cast his eyes to the north, he sees cultiva- 
tion advancing among the high lands of Chihuahua, and 
keeping, invariably, away from the river banks. The city 
of that name is distant twenty miles even from the little tribu- 
tary of the great river, and more than a hundred miles from 
the mouth of that tributary. If he pass west from Monte- 
rey, through Saltillo and thence south, his road will lie over 
sandy plains whose existence is evidence of the general cha- 
racter of the region. Arriving in Potosi, he finds himself in 
a country without rivers, and almost without the possibility 
of irrigation, and where any failure of the periodical rains is 
followed by famine and death, yet if he cast his eyes down- 
wards towards the coast, he sees a magnificent country, 
watered by numerous rivers, and in which the cotton and the 
indigo plant grow spontaneously : a country in which the 
maize grows with a luxuriance elsewhere unknown : one that 
might supply the world with sugar, and in which the only 
danger to be apprehended from the character of the soil is, 
that the crops might be smothered by reason of the rapid 
growth of plants that spring up in the rich earth, without 
aid, or even permission from the man who might undertake 
to cultivate it : yet there he sees no population. The land 
is uncleared and undrained, and likely so to remain, because 
those who should undertake to work, with the present means 
of the country, would starve, if they did not perish by the 
fevers that there, as everywhere, prevail among the richest 
soils until subjected to cultivation: and often long afterwards. 
Passing on, he sees Zacatecas, high and dry like Potosi, yet 
cultivated. Keeping the ridge, he sees on his left Tlascala, 
once the seat of a great and wealthy people, far removed 
from any stream whatsoever, and occupying the high land 



MAN AND LAND. 37 

from which descend little streams seeking the waters of both 
the Atlantic and the Pacific. On his right he sees the valley 
of Mexico, a land capable of yielding the largest returns to 
labour, that by slow degrees, with the growth of population 
and wealth, was once drained and rendered fit for cultiva- 
tion. In the time of Cortes, the people were numerous and 
rich, and the fertile soils they had brought into activity 
produced food in abundance for forty cities. Population and 
wealth have declined, and the remaining people have retired 
to the high lands bordering the valley, to cultivate the poorer 
soils ; and the single city that still remains draws its supplies 
of food from a distance of fifty miles, in a country where 
foads scarcely exist, the consequence of which is that corn 
is higher in price than in London or Paris while wages are 
very low. Fertile land is here superabundant, over w^hich 
roam half-starved cattle, seeking to obtain from the top soil : 
the only one used in this second childhood of agriculture : 
that nourishment which would be afforded in endless abund- 
ance, did the people possess the means and the indus- 
try to penetrate to those lower soils which were cultivated 
when population abounded. Not an acre in the hundred is 
cultivated at all, yet even with their imperfect machinery 
each one would yield tw^enty bushels. The people fly from it, 
whereas, according to Mr. Ricardo, it is that which would 
be first appropriated. 

Passing southward, we see Tabasco almost unoccupied, 
yet possessing highly fertile lands. Next we reach Yuca- 
tan, a land in which water is a luxury: yet here we meet 
a large and prosperous population, near neighbours to the 
better soils of Honduras that are covered with trees of the 
most enormous size, and that, when population and wealth 
shall have sufficiently increased, will yield returns to la- 
bour as large, if not larger, than any hitherto known : yet 
now they are a wilderness, aflfording subsistence but to a 
few miserable logwood and mahogany cutters. 

If, now, the reader look northward, towards the Carib- 

4 



38 MAN AND LAND. 

bean sea, he will see the little dry and rocky islands of 
Montserrat, Nevis, St. Kitts, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, and 
others, cultivated throughout, while at his right stands Tri- 
nidad, with the richest of soils, remaining almost in a state of 
nature. If he will cast his eyes on the map and mark 
the position of Santa Fe de Bogota, and the city of Quito, 
the centres of population, where men cluster together on 
the high and drylands while the valley of Oroonoko remains 
unoccupied, he will see exhibited on a great scale the 
same fact which, on a small one, we have shown to exist on 
the banks of the Schuylkill and the Susquehanna. If, next, 
he will take his station on the peaks of Chimborazo and 
look around, he will see the same great fact in relation to all 
southern America. He will see the only civilized people 
of the days of Pizarro occupying high and dry Peru, drained 
by little streams whose rapid course forbids the possibility 
that marshes should be formed in which vegetable matter 
may decay, to give richness to the soil for the produc- 
tion of timber before the period of cultivation, or of food 
afterwards. It was poor and easily cleared. It wanted no 
artificial drainage. It was therefore occupied. 

If, now, he turn his face to the east, he will see before 
him the rich valley of the Amazon, affording soils inferior 
to none on earth, yet to this day a wilderness. Let him 
next trace the numerous tributaries of that great river to 
their sources, and he will there meet the various Portuguese 
towns and cities, occupying the high lands, and waiting the 
further growth of population and wealth for the clearing and 
draining of the rich soil lying between them and the ocean : 
soils whose crops, transported on steamboats, will at some 
future day yield to the labour employed a return ten times 
greater than can now be obtained by cultivating the poor 
ones, and transporting the produce across hills and moun- 
tains on the backs of mules. The laws of nature require 
that if man would improve his condition he must work, 
and he must let others work in peace. He must let wealth 



MAN AND LAND. 



and population grow, and if he will not do this : if he will 
commit w^holesale robbery and murder under the pretence 
of making wars for «< the public good," or the hollow one 
of maintaining "the liberties of Europe :" she punishes him 
by shutting him out from those lands that would yield the 
largest return to his labour, and compelling him to travel on 
foot across barren mountains, when he might have a railroad 
car that would transport him rapidly through fertile valleys, 
where at every step he would see evidences of prosperity 
and happiness. 

Let the reader now cast his eyes south, and compare the 
steep declivity occupied by the people of Chili, advancing 
rapidly in population and wealth ; with the great valley of 
the La Plata, and its tribes of barbarians encamped upon 
lands capable of yielding the largest return to labour: and 
that will do so w^hen man shall relinquish the trade of w^ar, 
and permit the earth to enrich himself and his neighbour. 
Here, as everywhere, he has evidence that cultivation inva- 
riably commences on the poorer soils. 

Crossing now the ocean, let him next take up a map of 
Roman Britain, and after a little study determine for himself 
where agriculture should first take root. Throughout the 
southern portion of the island, Britannia Prima, he will see the 
small streams passing almost directly to the ocean, and thus 
affording evidence of a tolerably rapid fall, and of the ab- 
sence of marsh and heavily-timbered land: and here, accord- 
ingly, we find the commencement of cultivation. As he ap- 
proaches the valley of the Thames, he may see the marks of 
population on the high lands bordering it, but in the valley 
itself he sees little except in the existence of a single town. 
Passing northward, population is everywhere seen on the flanks 
of the central ridge, occupying the high grounds at the heads of 
the streams, but we look in vain for signs of life in the lower 
lands : on the banks of the Humber or its tributaries, or on 
those of the several streams emptying into the Wash. If, 
now, he inquire for the seats of early cultivation, he will 



40 MAN AND LAND. 

be referred to the sites of the rotten boroughs : to those parts 
of the kingdom in which men who can neither read nor 
write, still live in mud-built cottages, and receive nine 
shillings per week for their labour: and those commons 
upon which, to so great an extent, cultivation has recom- 
menced.* If he seek the palace of the Norman Kings, he 
will find it at Winchester, and not in the valley of the 
Thames. If he ask for the forests and swamps of the days 
of Richard and of Ivanhoe, he will everywhere be shown 
cultivated lands of the highest fertility. If he seek the land 
whose morasses had nearly swallowed up the army of the 
conquering Norman, on his return from the devastation of 
the north : that which daunted the antiquary Camden, even 
so late as the age of James I. : he will be shown South Lanca- 
shire, with its rich corn-fields covered with waving grain, 
and meadows on which pasture the finest cattle. If he ask 
for the land most recently taken into cultivation — the new- 
est soils— he will be taken to the fens of Lincoln ; to the late 
sandy wastes of Norfolk ; where his companion will exhibit 
to him the marl, yielding the largest and best crops of Eng- 
land : and then perhaps will accompany him on an excur- 
sion to Northumberland or Cumberland, counties occupied 
two centuries since by a population who found plunder 
more profitable than labour. Southern England possessed 
the land best fitted for early cultivation and for that reason 
least fitted for a more advanced state of population and 
wealth. Peru and Chili stood first on the list, but Brazil will 
win the race. Cultivation commenced in upper Brazil, but 
the banks of the Amazon will give food to a population ten 
times, and perhaps fifty times, greater. Lower Canada took 
precedence of Louisiana, but the latter has left her competi- 
tor far behind. New England preceded Pennsylvania, but 



* Such are the lands described by Eden, about fifty years since, as « the sorry 
pastures of geese, hogs, asses, half-grown horses and half-starved cattle," and 
existing by thousands of acres, but which wanted only " to be enclosed and 
taken care of, to be as rich and as valuable as any lands now in tillage." 



MAN AND LAND. 41 

the soil of the latter will, at some future time, enable her to 
produce food for ten times the number of inhabitants per acre 
that can be supported from that of Massachusetts or Rhode 
Island. The highest cultivation will ultimately be found 
where there exists the greatest variety of soils, and w'here 
man is enabled to pass in succession from the poor to 
the better, and thence to the best : the last resulting from 
the compounding of new soils by aid of the machinery 
which constitutes wealth, and which increases most rapidly 
where there exists the greatest tendency to an increase of 
population. The variety of soils in the north of England is far 
greater than in the south, and hence the superiority of the 
former over the latter : a superiority that will continue to be 
maintained. 

If we pass north, into Scotland, and inquire for the an- 
cient seats of cultivation, and the residences of the great 
chiefs by whom the peace of the country was so frequently 
disturbed, we shall find them in the higher regions of the 
country. If we desire to see what has been styled " the gra- 
nary of Scotland," w^e shall be referred to the light and 
easily cleared and cultivated soils of the Moray Frith. If 
we ask for the newest soils, we shall be taken to the Lothi- 
ans, or to the banks of the Tweed, inhabited but a short time 
since by barbarians, whose greatest pleasure was found in 
expeditions, for the purpose of plunder, into the adjacent Eng- 
lish counties. If we seek the forests and swamps of the 
days of Mary and Elizabeth, we shall find the finest farms 
in Scotland. If we ask for the poorest people, we shall be 
taken to the isles of the west : Mull or Skye : which were oc- 
cupied when meadow-lands were undrained : or to the Ork- 
neys, deemed in former times so valuable as to be received 
by the King of Norway in pledge for the payment of a sum 
of money, far greater, we doubt not, than the poor islands 
would but recently have commanded had the sale included 
the land itself as well as the right of sovereignty. If we 
stand on the hills of Sutherland, we see around land that has 
F 4* 



42 MAN AND LAND. 

been, from time immemorial, cultivated by starving High- 
landers ; but if we cast our eyes on the flats below, we see 
rich crops of turnips growing on soil that was, but a few 
years since, a waste. Stand where we may : on Arthur's 
Seat, or Stirling's towers ; or on the hills which border the 
great valley of Scotland : our eyes rest on fertile soils, al- 
most, even when not wholly, undrained and unoccupied, 
while around may be seen high and dry lands that have been 
in cultivation for centuries. 

In the days of Caesar, the most powerful nations of Gaul 
are seen clustering round the Alps, and occupying the 
lands that now yield the smallest return to labour. If we 
seek on the map for the cities with whose names we are 
most familiar, as connected with the history of France 
in the days of the founder of the Capetian race, of St. 
Louis, and of Philip Augustus : Chalons, St. Quentin, Sois- 
sons, Rheims, Troyes, Nancy, Orleans, Bourges, Dijon, Vi- 
enne, Nismes, Toulouse, or Cahors, once the great centre 
of the banking operations of France : w^e shall find them 
far towards the heads of the rivers on which they stand, 
or occupying the high grounds between the rivers. If we 
seek the centres of power at a later period, we may find 
them in wild and savage Brittany, yet inhabited by a peo- 
ple but little removed from barbarism : at Dijon, at the foot 
of the Alps : in Auvergne, even yet a " secret and safe asy- 
lum of crime, amidst inaccessible rocks and wilds, which 
nature seems to have designed rather for beasts than men :"* 
in the Limousin, which gave to the church so many popes 
that the Limousin cardinals at length were almost enabled 
to dictate the proceedings of the Conclave, yet is now the 
poorest part of France : or on the side of the Pyrenees, in 
Gascony, the country of the Armagnacs, and of crimes al- 
most unparalleled. If we look, at any of these periods, to- 
wards the lands further down the slope, we find the tend- 

* Flechier. 



MAN AND LAND. 43^ 

ency to their occupation very small indeed, in regard to any 
of those forming a part of the kingdom of France : but greatly 
increasing as we reach Guienne and Normandy, the two pro- 
vinces in which population and wealth increased most ra- 
pidly, by reason of their connection with England, under 
whose sway their rights were respected to a degree entirely 
unknown to the other provinces. In these grew up the 
love of labour and the habit of trade. In the others, the love 
of plunder and the contempt for all honest industry, common 
to all men who cultivate the poorest soils. 

If we look to the state of France at present, we shall 
see that the poor soils alone are almost universally culti- 
vated. Immense forests : the same in which roamed the hogs 
raised by the Gauls for the market of Rome : still cover 
many of the best lands, while from those which are cul- 
tivated the return is frequently but thrice the seed, be- 
cause of the extreme imperfection of the machinery used in 
the work of ploughing and drainage : the poor farmer doing 
little more than scratch the surface to bring the top-soil 
into use. France is buying bad land in Algeria, at the 
cost of hundreds of thousands of lives and hundreds of 
millions of treasure, which, if applied to bringing into activity 
the best soils of her old lands, now dormant because of the 
poverty of the people, would perhaps enable her to main- 
tain the position in the world she appears to be so ra- 
pidly losing. In that country population increases very 
slowly, and wealth but little faster, as must be the case al- 
ways with those who cannot clear and drain the better soils, in- 
variably last in being cultivated. The mountains and moors 
of Limburg and Luxemburg were occupied far in advance 
of the rich meadows of Holland, and while the fertile soils 
of Flanders and of Zealand presented to view only salt 
marshes and sandy wastes. , 

In the early history of Holland, we see a miserable peo- 
ple, surrounded by forests and marshes covering the most 
fertile lands, but living on islands of sand, and forced to con- 



44 MAN AND LAND. 

tent themselves with eggs, fish, and very small supplie.*;' of 
vegetable food of any kind. Their extreme poverty ex- 
empted them from the grinding taxation of Rome, and the 
unceasing vexations of Roman proconsuls, and by slow de- 
grees they grew in numbers and wealth. Unable by means 
of agriculture to obtain food, they sought it from commerce. 
With further growth, we see them then extending themselves 
over the land that could be cultivated, and gradually clear- 
ing the woods and draining the marshes, until at length 
we find a nation the wealthiest in Europe. In this case po- 
pulation and wealth appear to have spread rather upw^ards 
than downwards, because they had their origin in commerce 
and not in agriculture. Here, however, we have farther 
illustration of the fact that men always commence with the 
poorest soils. Commerce sought a shelter from Roman 
tyranny in the marshes of Holland, as we find it after- 
wards to have done among the lagiines of Venice, and be- 
hind the rocks of Amalfi, and the mountains of Liguria. 
These were the worst commercial soils, but they were those 
that could alone be cultivated, for they were those in which 
alone could security of person and property, so necessary 
to success in commerce, be obtained. 

In Germany, we see the mass of the early population on 
the higher part of the eastern slope of the Alps, and as we 
pass towards the mouths of the rivers it becomes less and 
less dense, and the low lands are seen to exist more and 
more in a state of nature. 

Passing into Italy, we see a numerous population in the 
high lands of Cisalpine Gaul, at a period when the rich 
soils of Venetia were unoccupied. As we advance south- 
wards, along the flanks of the Apennines, we find a gra- 
dually increasing population, wdth an increasing tendency to 
the cultivation of the better soils, and towns whose age 
may almost be inferred from their situation. Thus Veii and 
Alba were built when the banks of the Tiber were unoc- 
cupied, and Aquileia filled a place in Roman history 



MAN AND LAND. 45 

which was denied to the little place that then occupied the 
site of modern Pisa. 

In Greece, we mark the same great and universal fact. 
The meagre soil of Attica, every foot of which drains itself, 
was among the earliest fitted for cultivation, and there popu- 
lation and wealth grew rapidly ; while the fat Boeotia, re- 
quiring to be cleared and drained, followed slowly in the rear. 
Passing south, along the Isthmus, we have full in view on 
the left the short and steep eastern slope of Argolis, long 
since abandoned as incapable of yielding a return to labour ; 
yet there stand the ruins of Mycenae, of Tirynth and Troe- 
zene, witnesses to the fact that the least fertile soils of Pe- 
loponnesus : those which were too dry to require drainage, 
and too poor to require to be cleared : were first selected for 
cultivation. On the opposite side of the ridge, the slope 
is much longer, and the movement of the waters more slug- 
gish. Vegetation was far more rapid, and the land would 
have yielded a larger return to labour had it been acces- 
sible ; but here we find precisely the same state of things that 
was observed in South America, where Peru was so early 
cultivated, while the great valley remains to this day an im- 
practicable wilderness. On the short, steep, slope of xVchaia 
we find another witness in the State of Sicyon, whose ter- 
ritory was cultivated when the richer lands of Arcadia and 
Elis, watered by the Alpheeus, were still unoccupied. 

If, now, we cross the Mediterranean and ascend the Nile, 
we find cultivation becoming more and more ancient as we 
rise, until at length far towards its head we reach Thebes, 
the first capital of Egypt. With the growth of popula- 
tion and of wealth, we find the city of Memphis becoming 
the capital of the kingdom : but still later, the Delta is oc- 
cupied, and towns and cities rise in places that to the earlier 
kings were inaccessible, and with every step in this progress, 
there was increased return to labour. 

Passing by the Red Sea, and entering the Pacific, we may 
see innumerable rich islands, whose lower lands are un 



46 MAN AND LAND. 

occupied, because of their superior richness rendering them 
dangerous to Hfe, Avhile population clusters round the hills. 
Farther south, are rich valleys in Australia, uninhabited, or, if 
inhabited at all, by a people standing lowest in the catalogue 
of the human race ; while on the little high-pointed islands 
of the coast, distant but a few miles, are found a superior 
race, with houses, cultivation, and manufactures. Here we 
find precisely the facts offered by South America and Argolis. 
Turning our steps northward, towards India, we meet Cey- 
lon, in the centre of which are found the dominions of the 
king of Candy, whose subjects have the same aversion to 
the low and rich lands, unhealthy in their present state, that 
is felt by the people of Mexico and of Java. Entering India 
by Cape Comorin, and following the great range of high lands, 
the back-bone of the peninsida, we find the cities of Seringa- 
patam, Poonah, and Ahmednugger, while below, near the 
coast, are seen the European cities of Madras, Calcutta and 
Bombay, the creation of a very recent day. Intermediate 
between the two, are seen numerous cities, whose positions, 
sometimes far av^'ay from the banks of the rivers, and at 
other times near their sources, show that the most fertile 
lands have not been those first cultivated. Standing on 
the high lands between Calcutta and Bombay, we have on 
the one hand the delta of the Indus, and on the other that of 
the Ganges. The former remains yet entirely unoccupied. 
Through hundreds of miles that river rolls its course, almost 
wuthout a settlement on its banks, while on the higher coun- 
try, right and left, exists a numerous population. On the 
Ganges, the first city that we meet, Patna, is distant from its 
mouth almost five hundred miles. Then follow Benares, 
Agra, and, at length, far up towards its head, we meet Delhi, 
the capital of all India w^hile yet the government remained 
in the hands of its native sovereigns. Here, as everywhere 
else, man avoids the low rich soils that need clearing and 
drainage, and seeks in the high lands that drain themselves 
the means of employing his labour in the search for food : 



MAN AND LAND. 47 

and here, as everywhere else where the top-soil of the 
dry land alone is cultivated, the return to labour is small ; 
and hence it is that we find the Hindoo working for a rupee, 
or perhaps two, per month : sufficient only to give him a hand- 
ful of rice per day, and to purchase a rag of cotton cloth 
with which to cover his loins. The most fertile soils exist in 
unlimited quantity on land that is untouched, and close to that 
which the labourer scratches with a stick for w^ant of a spade, 
making his harvest with his hands for want of a reaping 
hook, and carrying home upon his shoulders the miserable 
crop, for want of a horse and a cart. We have here pre- 
cisely the state of things that, were Mr. Ricardo's doctrine 
true, should give the highest prosperity, yet famine and pes- 
tilence are frequent, and men rob and murder on the high- 
way, to an extent and with a coolness unknown in any other 
country ; because of the impossibility of obtaining subsistence 
by honest industry where land abounds and man is scarce. 
Passing northward, by Caubul and Affghanistan, and leav- 
ing on our left the barren Persia whose weak dry soils have 
been cultivated through a long series of ages, we attain the 
Himalaya range, the highest point of the earth's surface. 
Looking down, we see immediately around the cradle of the 
human race, where head the streams that empty into the Frozen 
Ocean and the Bay of Bengal, the Mediterranean and the Pa- 
cific. It is the land, of all others, suited to the purpose : that 
which will most readily cfford to the man who works with- 
out a spade or an axe, a small supply of food. Here we are 
surrounded by man in a state of barbarism : and standing 
here, we may trace the course of successive tribes and na- 
tions passing towards the lower and more productive lands, 
yet compelled in all cases to seek the route that is least 
disturbed with water courses, and therefore keeping the 
ridge that divides the w^aters of the Black Sea and the 
Mediterranean from those of the Baltic : standing here we 
may mark them, as they descend the slope, sometimes stop- 
ping for the purpose of cultivating the poor land that can, 



48 MAN AND LAND. 

vvith their indifferent machinery, be made to yield a small 
supply of food ; and at other times marching on and reaching 
the neighbourhood of the sea, there to place themselves, not 
on the rich lands, but on the poor soils of the steep hillside — 
those on which water cannot stand to give nourishment 
to trees, or to afford annoyance to settlers whose means are 
inadequate to the draining of swamps and marshes : or on lit- 
tle peaked islands, from which the water passes rapidly, as 
in the case of those of the ^gean, cultivated from so early 
a period. We mark some of these tribes gradually reach- 
ing the Mediterranean, where civilization is first found, and 
soonest lost under the weight of successive waves of emigra- 
tion, while others are seen passing farther west, and entering 
Italy, and France, and Spain. Others, more adventurous, 
reach the British isles. Again, after a rest of a few cen- 
turies, we see them crossing the broad Atlantic, and com- 
mencing the ascent of the slope of the Allegheny, prepara- 
tory to the ascent and passage of the great range that divides 
the waters of the Pacific from those of the Atlantic ; and in 
all cases we mark the pioneers gladly seizing on the clear dry 
land of the hillsides, in preference to the rich and highly 
wooded land of the river bottoms. Everywhere we see them, 
as population gradually increases, descending, equally gra- 
dually, the sides of the hills and mountains towards the rich 
lands at their feet : and everywhere, with the growth of num- 
bers, penetrating the earth to reach the lower soils, to ena- 
ble them to combine the upper clay, or sand, with the lower 
marl, or lime, and thus compounding for themselves, out of 
the various materials with which they have been provided by 
the Deity, a soil capable of yielding a larger return than that 
upon which they were at first compelled to expend their la- 
bours. Everywhere, with increased power of union, we see 
them exercising increased power over land. Everywhere, 
as the new soils are brought into activity, and as they are 
enabled to obtain larger returns, we find more rapid increase 
of population, producing increased tendency to combination 



MAN AND LAND. 49 

of exertion, by which the powers of the individual labourer 
are trebled, quadrupled, and quintupled, and sometimes fifty- 
fold increased ; enabling him better to provide for his imme- 
diate wants, while accumulating more rapidly the machinery 
by means of which he hopes further to increase his power 
of production, and to bring to light the vast treasures of 
nature. Everpvhere, we find that with increasing population 
the supply of food becomes more abundant and regular, 
and clothing and shelter are obtained with greater ease ; 
famine and pestilence tend to pass away ; health becomes 
more universal ; life becomes more and more prolonged, and 
man becomes more happy and more free. 

In regard to all the wants of man, except the single and 
important one of food, such is admitted to be the case. It is 
seen that with the growth of population and of wealth men 
obtain water, and iron, and coal, and clothing, and the use 
of houses, and ships, and roads, in return for less labour than 
was at first required. It is not doubted that the great work 
produced at a cost of ten millions, by means of which the 
Croton river is carried through the city of New York, enables 
men to obtain water at less cost than was required when each 
man took a bucket and helped himself on the Hudson's bank. 
It is seen that the shaft which has required years to sink, 
and to discharge the water from which the most powerful en- 
gines are required, supplies fuel more cheaply than at first, 
when the settlers carried home the scraps of half-decom- 
posed timber for want of an axe wdth which to cut the al- 
ready fallen log : that the grist-mill converts the grain into 
flour at less cost of labour than was needed when it was 
pounded betw^een two stones : and that the gigantic factory 
supplies cloth more cheaply than the little loom : but it is denied 
that such is the case with food. In regard to every thing 
else, man commences with the worst machinery and pro- 
ceeds upward towards the best : but in regard to food, and that 
alone, he commences, according to Mr. Ricardo, with the best 
and proceeds downward towards the worst: and with every 

5 



50 MAN AND LAND. 

stage of the progress finds a decreasing return to his labour, 
threatening starvation and admonishing him against raising 
children to aid him in his age, lest they should imitate 
the conduct of the people of India and of the islands of the 
Pacific, (where land however is abundant and food should be 
cheap,) and bury him alive, or expose him on the river shore, 
that they may divide among themselves his modicum of 
food. 

How far all this is true, we must leave to the reader to 
judge. All others of the laws of nature are broad and uni- 
versally true, and we are disposed to hope that he may now 
agree with us in believing that there is one law, and one alone, 
for food, light, air, clothing, and fuel : and that man, in 
all and every case, commences with the worst machinery and 
proceeds onward to the best ; thus enabled, with the growth 
of wealth, population, and the habit of union, to obtain with 
constantly diminishing labour an increased supply of all the 
necessaries, conveniences, comforts, and luxuries of life. 



The second proposition is, that with the increase of po- 
pulation it becomes necessary to resort to soils of inferior fer- 
tility, yielding a smaller return to labour. 

If man begins always with the best soils, then is this pro- 
position true, and with every step in the progress of popula- 
tion, he loses more and more the control over his own ac- 
tions — becoming the victim oian overruling necessity. If, on 
the contrary, he begins with the poor soils, and passes gra- 
dually towards the best, every step should be accompanied 
by increasing ^owjer to select such soils as are best suited to 
his purpose, taking sometimes the light sand, and at others 
the heavy marl : at one time the clay, and at another the 
lime : at one time the iron and at another the coal : the hill- 
top or the river bottom : the near or the distant : the superfi- 
cial or the profound : as he deems them best calculated to 



MAN AND LAND. 51 

minister to his wants and those of his family, and to enable 
him to accumulate the machinery required for exercising still 
greater power over the materials provided by the Creator for 
his use, and awaiting his draft. If increasing population 
produce necessity, the standard of man, physical, moral, in- 
tellectual, and political, must fall. If it give him power, the 
standard must rise, and he must feed better, clothe himself 
better, lodge better, act better, think better, and exercise in 
relation to all the actions of his life a volition increasing with 
every step in the growth of his power over the material 
world. Which of those two classes of phenomena it is that 
has been seen to appear, we propose now to examine. 

In 1760, the population of England and Wales was 
6,479,000. It is now about 16,000,000. The total quan- 
tity of grain produced in the former period was estimated at 
15,349,000 quarters, and the exports exceeded the imports by 
400,000 quarters. The whole quantity of land is about 
37,000,000 of acres. Of this, a very large portion was un- 
enclosed and uncultivated, so recently as the closing years of 
the last century. Eden, writing in 1797, speaks of Great 
Britain as a country '' disfigured and burdened everywhere" 
with "immeasurable wastes, commons, and heaths," and 
resembling '' one of those huge unwieldy cloaks worn in 
Italy and Spain, of which a very small part is serviceable to 
the wearer, while the rest is not only useless, but cumber- 
some and oppressive." He regarded it as containing, <'in 
proportion to its size, more acres of waste land than 
any civilized kingdom in the world, Russia itself not ex- 
cepted." 

How great must have been the extension of cultivation 
since the period first named, may be judged from the fact 
that, independently of all private land that has since been 
cleared and drained, and manured, and limed, and marled, 
and thus rendered fit for the production of food, about eight 
millions of acres of commons and wastes : almost one-fourth 
of the whole surface : have been enclosed under acts of Parlia- 



52 MAN AND LAND. 

ment. We suppose it fair to infer that the quantity now in 
cultivation is, at the lowest calculation, twice as great as at 
the accession of George III., in 1760. With this extension 
over the surface, there has been a corresponding descent into 
the bowels of the land, and the lower soils have been to a 
wonderful extent combined with the superficial ones. The 
underlying marl of Norfolk and Lincoln has been combined 
with the sand, and throughout the kingdom lime has been, to 
an extent not to be estimated, combined with the clay, the 
power to accomplish which has resulted from the cultivation of 
the iron and coal soils, always among the last to be brought 
into full activity. The effect of this may be judged from the 
fact that the same land which in the former period yielded, 
in addition to the grain, but about forty tons of straw, now 
yields the same grain and more than five hundred tons of 
straw, hay, and turnips, as food for the cattle required to meet 
the demands of the meat markets of the kingdom : demands 
thrice exceeding those of the former period. The weight 
of food, per acre, is considerably more than twice as great 
as was then obtained, and the number of acres being doubled, 
we have five times the quantity of food to be distributed, 
while the population has increased but one hundred and 
fifty per cent. 

To this must, however, be added the vast quantity of ani- 
mal and vegetable food obtained from Ireland and Scotland, 
the imports from America and the continent of Europe : the 
sugar and coffee of the West Indies and Brazil : and the tea 
from China : the commerce in all of which existed to a very 
small extent in 1760. The weight of these three articles 
now consumed exceeds 300,000 tons, or 1,200,000 quarters, 
being nearly one-twelfth part as much as all the grain pro- 
duced in 1760, when the export exceeded the import. The 
amount of food now imported is almost equal to the whole 
quantity consumed at that period, and this, added to the pro- 
duct of agriculture at home, would give six times the quan- 
tity of food, wdth only two and a half times the population 



MAN AND LAND. 53 

making- the average about two and a half times as much per 
head for the Avhole community. 

The number of famiHes in England and Wales, in 
1831, was 2,900,000, and of these but 835,000 w^ere en- 
gaged in agriculture. The average size of families is about 
five persons, and this would give about 4,200,000 as the 
amount of that class of the people. In 1760, the mass of 
the population was of that description, and we are disposed 
to believe that an allowance of one-half is far below the 
truth. If so, the result would be, that while the number of 
persons employed in agriculture had increased by only one- 
third, the product had increased five times, and that the re- 
turn to the labour employed was, per head, almost four times 
greater than at that period. Such being the case, the new 
soils must be far better than the old, and the great increase 
of population, which, according to Mr. Ricardo's doctrine, 
should have brought with it increased necessity, has been ac- 
companied by a steadily increasing pozi^er to consume the pro- 
duce of rich meadow-lands that now yield fat beef, where, be- 
fore, forests and sw^amps gave but the meat of the half-starved 
ox, or half-fed hog, upon which landlords banqueted when 
land was abundant : and thereto to add the produce of the soils 
of China and India, Mexico and Brazil, Cuba and Carolina. 
Wealth has grown faster than population, and the man of 
England has become lord of all the soils of the world, selecting 
at his pleasure the commodities that he prefers : whereas, 
when the poor soils alone were cultivated, he took what he 
could get, and as necessity had no law, the worst bread w^as 
then welcome, and a herring at harvest time w^as a luxury. 

Nearly three millions of families are to be fed, where in 
1760 there were but little over 1,200,000, and wdth the ex- 
ception of the quantity of food imported, the whole is pro- 
duced by the labour of a number of persons but little greater 
than was then employed in agriculture, which could not be 
the case did not the labour employed on the soils since brought 
into cultivation yield a greatly increased return. That they 



54 MAN AND LAND. 

do yield such increase is evident from the fact that in 1760 
the great mass of labour of the country was required for the 
production of vegetable food, whereas much of it is now 
employed in the cultivation of animals that yield hides that 
are almost equally with food essential to the comfort of man : 
much in producing the fuel required to keep him warm and 
preserve his health : and a vast portion of it in the fabrica- 
tion of clothing, of which such vast quantities are consumed 
at home : other portions being exchanged for sugar, tea, 
coffee, rice, cheese, butter, &c., which millions have learned 
to regard as absolute necessaries, though but recently luxu- 
ries unattainable even by some who were ranked among 
the rich. At every step there is an increased consciousness 
in man of the existence of power to improve his condition, 
producing increased desire of improvement. Desire pro- 
duces determination, and determination creates power. 

At the close of the fourteenth century, the population was 
probably about two and a half millions. Fertile land abounded, 
but men cultivated the poor soils, because unable to clear 
and drain the rich ones. Of this we have evidence in 
various statements that have come down to. us of the ac- 
tual contents of farms and messuages, some of which are 
given by Eden, Six of these, of various dates from 1359 to 
1400, contained one thousand one hundred and forty-two 
acres of arable, and but one hundred and fifty-one of mea- 
dow and pasture land. The return to the husbandman 
averaged less than a quarter to the acre, and if from this be 
deducted two bushels for the seed, we have six bushels as 
the product of labour. The population is now about six and 
a half times greater, but the number of persons who live by 
the labours of the field is not three times greater, while the 
land in cultivation is probably ten times as great ; and the 
average yield per acre, estimating green crops as beef and 
mutton, and looking to the vast yield ofpotatoes and various 
other articles of vegetable food, is at least six times as great: 
probably even far more. If this be so, the return to labour 



MAN AND LAND. 55 

employed on the soils broiig-ht into use since the days of the 
Edwards, is more than twenty times as great as when good 
land abounded, and when, according to Mr. Ricardo, none 
were required for cultivation but those w^hich would yield the 
largest return. Hence it is that so large a population can 
be fed, while applying themselves to the production of fuel, 
clothing, and machinery of every description fitted to pro- 
mote the comfort and happiness of man. 

In '< the good old times" of Ivanhoe and Richard, when 
fertile land was abundant and people rare, the Saxon hogs 
roamed the woods, living upon acorns produced from oaks 
that Cedric lacked the means to fell. Later, half-starved 
sheep fed upon lands incapable of yielding grain, but cows 
and oxen were few, because the fine rich meadow was co- 
vered with wood and so saturated with moisture as to be 
inaccessible. Maids of honour then luxuriated on bacon, and 
labourers banqueted upon "the strength of water-gruel," as 
did sixty years since many of the people of those northern 
counties,* which now present to view the finest farms in Eng- 
land, the rich soils composing which were then awaiting the 
growth of population and of wealth. A piece of fat pork 
was, in those days, an article of luxury rarely to be ob- 
tained by the labourer. Even within a century, the bread 
consumed by a large portion of the people was made of bar- 
ley, rye, and oats, the consumption of wheat being limited 
to the rich ; the quantity produced being small. It is now in 
universal use, although so recently as 1727 an eight acre 
field of it, near Edinburgh, w^as deemed a curiosity. As 
late as 1763, there was no such person as a public butcher 
known in Glasgow. It was the custom of families to buy a 
half- fed ox in the autumn and salt down the meat as the year's 
supply of animal food. The state of things there is an in- 
dex to that which existed in the Lothians, and in Northum- 
berland and other counties of the north of England, where 

* Eden. 



56 MAN AND LAND. 

may now be seen the most prosperous agriculture of Britain. 
At that time men cultivated, not the best soils, but those 
which they could cultivate, leaving the rich ones for their 
successors : and in this they did what is done now every day 
by the settlers of Illinois and Wisconsin. 

While w^heaten bread has thus succeeded the compound of 
barley, rye, and acorns, once denominated bread, and which 
was supposed to afford more nourishment, because it re- 
mained longer in the stomach, and was less easily digested : an 
idea repeated in the present day by the poor Irish peasant, who 
prefers the miserable potato called the lumper, because it has, 
as he says, a bone in it: fat mutton and beef have succeeded the 
salt herring on the table of the artisan and labourer, and the 
mast-fed bacon on that of the landlord. Within a century 
the average weight of cattle has risen from three hundred 
and seventy to eight hundred pounds, and that of sheep from 
twenty-eight to eighty pounds, and the number consumed has 
increased more rapidly than the weight. The quantity of 
wool, of hides, and of other materials for manufactures of 
various kinds, is immense, and yet the agricultural popula- 
tion is certainly not three times as great as in the days of 
the Black Prince. The return to labour has therefore largely 
increased as, with increased numbers, man has acquired 
power over the various soils, then too deep or distant to be 
cultivated with the means at his command, but now required 
for the supply of the greatly increased and thriving population. 

Mr. Ricardo's proposition is diametrically opposed to all 
the facts presented by the history of the United States : of 
England : and of the World : whereas the following is in strict 
accordance therewith : 

With the increase of population there arises a habit of 
union, tending to promote the growth of wealth and to facilitate 
the acquisition of machinery to be used in aid of labour ; 
and with each step in this progress, man acquires increased 
power over the materials of which the earth is composed, and 
increased power to determine for himself which to select 



MAN AND LAND. 57 

for cultivation, as being most likely to promote the object 
of maintaining and improving his condition ; and with every 
increase of this power he is enabled to obtain a larger return 
to his labour, and to consume more, while accumulating 
with still increased rapidity the machinery required for fur- 
ther improvement. 



The third proposition is, that with the necessity for applying 
labour less productively which thus accompanies the growth 
of population, rent arises : the owner of land No. 1, yielding 
one hundred quarters, being enabled to demand and to ob- 
tain in return for its use, ten quarters when resort is had to 
those of second quality, yielding ninety quarters : and twenty 
when No. 3 is brought into use, yielding only eighty quarters. 

Were all land of precisely equal productive power, this 
necessity could not be supposed to arise ; yet compensation 
would still be paid for the use of a farm provided w^ith build- 
ings and enclosures, that would be denied to the owner of one 
which remained in a state of nature. That compensation is 
regarded by Mr. Ricardo as being only interest upon capital, 
and to be distinguished from what is paid for the use of the 
powers of the soil. When lands of different capabilities are 
in use, and all equally provided with fences, houses, barns, 
&c., he supposes the owner of No. 1 to receive the interest 
upon his capital, plus the difference between the one hundred 
quarters that it is capable of yielding, and the ninety, eighty, 
or seventy quarters that may be yielded by the soil of lowest 
power that the necessities of man have compelled him to 
cultivate. This difference he holds to be the true rent. 

If, however, cultivation always commence on the poorer 
soils, and proceed from them to the better ones, the reverse 
course should be pursued ; and the owner of the land first 
cultivated should receive interest, minus the difference be- 
tween its powers and those of other lands that may, with the 
increase of population and wealth, be brought into activity 



58 MAN AND LAND. 

with the same quantity of labour that had been expended 
upon it. The first Uttle clearing on the hill side, with its 
miserable cabin, has cost a thousand days of labour, whereas 
a meadow of greater extent may now be cleared, and a good 
log-house erected, with half that quantity. If the first settler 
desire to let his land to his new neighbour, the latter will 
give him — not profits plus difference, but — profits minus dif- 
ference. Daily observation shows that such is the course of 
proceeding, and that land obeys the same law^s as all other 
commodities and things. The old ship cost a vast amount 
of labour, but she can carry only five thousand barrels ; 
whereas a new ship, capable of carrying ten thousand barrels, 
can be built with half the labour. The owner of the first 
receives, as freight, profits minus the difference. The old 
house cost the labour of ten thousand days, but it wdll accom- 
modate only ten persons. A new one, capable of affording 
better accommodation to twenty, can be produced with five 
thousand days of labour. The owner of the first w^ill receive, 
as rent, profits minus the difference. And so is it with early 
steam-engines, railroads, mills, and all other machines. 

The price of land is more or less in proportion to the rent 
that is paid. If the doctrine of Mr. Ricardo is true, the sell- 
ing price should be the capital invested, plus the value of the 
true rent. If, on the contrar}^, man always commences with 
the poor soils, and proceeds onward towards the better ones, 
the price should be the capital, minus the difference between 
its power of paying rent and that of other land which could 
be brought into cultivation by aid of the same capital. If his 
doctrine is true, the powder of the land and its representative 
over man, increases as population and the necessities of man 
increase : but if it is not true : if man commences always 
with the poor soils, and proceeds onw^ards to the richer ones : 
then must the power of man over land and its representative 
always increase ; and then must he be enabled to obtain, at 
every step, land of equal powers w^ith diminished labour ; and 
then must those heretofore cultivated tend steadily towards 



MAN AND LAND. 59 

diminution in their labour value. That such is the fact, we 
propose now to show. The whole land rental of England 
and Wales is about thirty millions, which, at twenty-five 
years' purchase, represents a capital of seven hundred and 
fifty millions. The wages of labourers and mechanics average 
about £bO per annum. The landed property of England and 
Wales thus represents the labour of fifteen millions of men 
for one year, or that of half a million of men for thirty years. 
Let us now suppose the island reduced to the state in which 
it was found by Caesar ; covered with impenetrable woods, (the 
timber of which is of no value because of its superabundance,) 
abounding in marshes and swamps, and heaths and sandy 
wastes; and then estimate the quantity of labour that would 
be required to place it in its present position, with its lands 
cleared, levelled, enclosed, and drained ; with its turnpikes 
and railroads, its churches, school-houses, colleges, court- 
houses, and market-houses ; its furnaces, forges, coal, iron, 
and copper mines ; and the thousands and tens of thousands 
of other improvements required to bring into activity those 
powers for the use of which rent is paid, and it will be found 
that it would require the labour of treble the number of men 
for centuries, even although provided with all the machi- 
nery of modern times — the best axe and the best plough, 
the steam-engine, and the railroad car.* 

The same thing may now be exhibited on a smaller scale. A 
part of South Lancashire, the forest and chase of Rossendale, 
embracing an area of twenty-four square miles, contained 
eighty souls at the beginning of the sixteenth century; and 
the rental, in the time of James L, little more than two cen- 



* " Those who reflect for a moment on the many hundreds, or rather thou 
sands of millions, that have been expended in fencing, draining, manuring, 
and otherwise improving, the land of Great Britain, and in the erection of 
farm buildings, must be satisfied that the return for this capital, though 
miserably inadequate, very greatly exceeds the other portion of the gross rental 
of the kingdom." — McCuUoch. Such being the case, it might have been ob- 
vious that all rent was paid for the use of these improvements, and that there 
really was no other portion to be accounted for. 



60 MAN AND LAND. 

turies since, amounted to ^£122 13 8. It has now a popula- 
tion of eighty-one thousand ; and the annual rental is .£50,000, 
equivalent, at twenty- five years' purchase, to £1,250,000. 
We have never seen this land, but we have no hesitation in 
saying that if it were now given to Baron Rothschild, in the 
state in which it existed in the days of James, with a bounty 
equal to its value ; on condition of doing with the timber 
the same that has been done with that which then stood there, 
he binding himself to give to the property the same advan- 
tages as those for which rent is now paid, his private fortune 
would be expended in addition to the bounty long before 
the work was completed. The amount received as rent 
is profit upon capital, and is interest upon the amount ex- 
pended, minus the difference between the power of Rossen- 
dale to yield a return to labour, and that of the newer soils 
that can now be brought into activity by the application of 
the same labour that has been there employed. Such, like- 
wise, is the case with the rents of London and Paris, New 
York and New Orleans. With all their advantages of situa- 
tion, their selling prices represent but a small portion of 
what it would cost to reproduce them, w^ere their sites again 
reduced to a state of nature. The power of man over mere 
brute wealth thus grows with every increase in the ratio of 
wealth to population. 

There is not, throughout the United States, a county, town- 
ship, town, or city, that would sell for cost ; or one whose rents 
are equal to the interest upon the labour and capital ex- 
pended. 

Every one is familiar with the fact that farms sell for little 
more than the value of the improvements. When we come 
to inquire what " improvements" are included in this esti- 
mate, we find that the heaviest are omitted ; that nothing is 
put down for clearing and draining the land, for the roads 
that have been made, the court-house and the prison that 
have been built, with the taxes that have been annually paid ; 
for the church and the school-house that have been built 



MAN AND LAND. 61 

by subscription ; for the canal that passes through a piece 
of fine meadow-land, the contribution of the owner to the 
great work; or for a thousand other conveniences and advan- 
tages that give value to the property, and induce men to feel 
willing to pay rent for its use. Were all these things esti- 
mated, it would be found that the price is — cost, minus a 
large difference. 

The great landholder of the world is the People of the 
United States, as represented by their Government. He ob- 
tains his land at a price that is apparently very low, yet he 
would be ruined were it not for his exemption from contri- 
butions. Population gradually approaches his limits. Canals 
and roads are made to or through them. By degrees a por- 
tion acquires the small value of $1'25, the minimum price, 
per acre. Settlers make new roads, and build churches and 
school-houses. He pays no taxes, but they do. Another 
section reaches the minimum price, and he sells it. Popu- 
lation increases more rapidly, and more roads are made, 
more churches and school-houses are built, but still he pays 
no taxes for these purposes. At length the whole is sold ; 
and when he comes to foot up the account, he finds that by 
omitting many of the heaviest items of cost — those attendant 
upon affording protection to the settlers until they were able 
to protect themselves — a small profit is made to appear. 

The price that is paid for land represents a portion, and 
often a very small portion, of its cost. Labour is frequently 
thrown away upon it, because it does not consist of the 
peculiar kind of soil that is needed at the moment. The 
settler that begins with clearing swamps, throws away his 
labour and dies of fever, unless he prevent that occurrence 
by running away. The land is rich, but its time is not come. 
The man who sinks into granite, searching for coal, throws 
away his labour. The land will be valuable when granite 
quarries come to be wanted, but its time is not come. The 
man who attempts to raise marl while surrounded by rich 
meadow land yet uncleared, throws away his time. The 

6 



62 MAN AND LAND. 

land is rich, but its time is not come. All soils have quali- 
ties tending to render them useful to man, and all are destined 
to come into activity ; but it is the decree of nature that the 
best soils — those most fitted to yield a large return to labour — ■ 
shall be obtained for his use only at the price of labour ; 
and their attainment is the reward held out to him as the 
inducement to steady exertion, prudence, economy, and a 
constant observance of the great law of Christianity, which 
requires that every man shall respect in others those rights of 
person and property that he desires others to respect in him- 
self. Where these exist, he is seen passing steadily and 
regularly from poor soils to those which are more productive ; 
and with every step there is an increase of population, wealth, 
prosperity, arid happiness. The last historian of the world, 
prior to its dissolution, will have, we doubt not, to say of the 
soils, as Byron said of the skies of Italy : 

" Parting day 
Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues 
With a new colour as it gasps away, 
The lust still loveliest, till — 'tis gone — and all is gray." 

Rent is paid for the use of the improvements which labour 
has accomplished for, or on, land, and which constitute items 
of w^ealth. Wealth tends to augment with population, and 
the power of accumulating further wealth increases with con- 
stantly accelerating pace as new soils are brought into cul- 
tivation, each yielding in succession a larger return to labour. 
Rent tends, therefore, to increase in amount with the growth 
of wealth and population. It is greatest in England, the 
wealthiest country of Europe. It diminishes as we pass 
thence to the poorer countries of France, Germany, Italy, and 
Spain, and at length disappears totally among the Rocky 
Mountains and the Islands of the Pacific. 



The fourth proposition is, that as with the increase of popu- 
lation recourse is necessarily had to poorer soils, yielding a 



MAN AND LAND, 63 

less return to labour, the proportion of the land-owner tends 
to increase. 

If cultivation begins with the rich soils and proceeds to the 
poor ones, the power of the man who represents land, 
over its products, must always increase, and he must take a 
larger proportion, attended with increasing inequality of con- 
dition ; but if, on the contrary, it always begins with the 
poor soils and proceeds to the rich ones, then must the power 
of man over land and its representative always increase, 
he being enabled to demand a constantly increasing propor- 
tion, leaving to the representative of land a constantly dimin- 
ishing one ; and thus with each step in the progress of cul- 
tivation there must be an increasing tendency to equality of 
condition. 

It was observed, half a century since, that the proportion 
of the landlord was decreasing. Mr. Malthus admitted the 
fact, and regarded it as a proof that there was increased 
difficulty in obtaining food. The common impression, how^- 
ever, was, that men lived better than in olden times ; that 
now they had meat and wheaten bread, and sugar, and tea 
and coffee ; whereas, in times long past, they were obHged 
to be contented with barley, rye, and acorn bread. To prove 
that this was not the fact, Mr. Malthus asserted that whereas 
in the latter half of the fifteenth century the labourer could 
have one hundred and ninety-tv/o pints of wheat as w^ages 
for a week, he then [1810] could have but eighty pints. 
Since then another writer has gone still further, and has 
asserted that in 1495 he could have one hundred and ninety- 
nine pints, or more than three bushels, for that amount of 
labour. 

What were the precise annual wages of a labourer at that 
moment we have no means of ascertaining ; but the change 
from century to century was very slow, and we shall not err 
very greatly in taking those of the last years of the previous 
one. In 1389, a plough driver had 7^., and a carter 105. 
per annuTUj without clothing, or any other perquisite ; and it 



64 MAN AND LAND. 

is esteemed doubtful if, in addition to this, he had his own 
wretched food. On an average of years these wages would 
command not more than a quarter of wheat, or eight bushels, 
and yet are we told that a labourer could earn three bushels 
per week ! In the same year, four hundred and fifty days' 
labour were required for the harvesting of the produce of two 
hundred acres of land ; and the average net yield was about 
six bushels per acre : in the whole, twelve hundred bushels, 
or two and two-third bushels harvested for each day's work. 
The week's return, at same rate, would be sixteen bushels, 
of which almost exactly one-fifth is allowed as the wages of 
every week in the year. Of the people who worked nearly 
all were employed in agriculture, and very few in manufac- 
tures or trade. Had all been so employed, with precisely 
similar returns and similar wages, it would follow that five 
weeks' wages would be equal to the whole annual crop ; and 
such statements are put forth gravely by writers who know 
that at that very period the land and its representative took 
two-thirds, leaving but one-third for the labourer. The har- 
vest labourer of the present day receives probably one-fortieth 
of the quantity harvested. He has work all the year, and 
harvest wages do not differ very greatly from those of other 
days ; but in the fifteenth century employment during the 
year was rare, and those wages constituted an important 
portion of the year's revenue ; as we see to be even now^ the 
case wnth the labourers of Ireland. Increased wealth facili- 
tates the distribution of employment throughout all seasons 
of the year, and thus increases greatly the productiveness of 
labour. 

The proportion of the landlord w^as supposed by Mr. Mal- 
thus, at the time he wrote, to be about one-fourth of the 
whole product. Recently Mr. McCulloch has reduced it to 
one-fifth ; although, during the period that has elapsed, the 
quantity of labour and capital applied to the cultivation of 
new soils has been prodigiously great, and the proportion 



MAN AND LAND. 65 

should have increased, there being more capital to draw inte- 
rest, plus a greater dilTerence. 

If cultivation does always commence with the best soils, 
and man is compelled, as population increases, to descend to 
those yielding a less and less return to labour, the proportion 
of the landlord must increase. He must take profits, plus a 
constantly increasing difference ; and he must ultimately ab- 
sorb the whole product, except so far as he may find it to his 
interest to give something to his slave to keep him alive. If, 
however, cultivation always commences on the poor soils, and 
man proceeds, as population and wealth increase, always to 
the better soils, then the reverse must happen, and the landlord 
must have profits minus the difference, giving him a con- 
stantly decreasing proportion, and leaving to the labourer a 
constantly increasing one. In the one case the power of the 
land and its representative over the product must increase, 
and that of the labourer must diminish. In the other, the 
power of the labourer must rise, and that of the land must 
fall. That the latter does fall, is proved by the history of 
every nation of the world. The English landlord's propor- 
tion, formerly two-thirds, or more, was, in the days of Mr. 
Malthus, one-fourth ; in those of Mr. McCulloch, one-fifth ; 
and if population and wealth be permitted to increase, the 
day is not far distant when it will be one-tenth, or less, while 
the amount will be greater than now. If we look to other 
parts of the world, we shall see abundant evidence of this. 
In Prussia, forty years since, it was assumed that the pea- 
sant who retained one-third of the product had a decent sub- 
sistence. In France, where population and wealth grow 
very slowly, the proportion of the landlord is much greater 
than in England, and probably greater than in Prussia. In 
Spain and Sicily it is greater than in France. In Mexico it 
is greater than it is in Sicily. In India, greater than in 
Mexico. In all these countries the most fertile soils 
abound, uncultivated ; and men scratch the surface, obtain- 
ing from the superior soil the most sorry return to their labour. 

6* 



/ 



66 MAN AND LAND. 

Whenever the time shall come when the rulers of their desti- 
nies shall permit population and wealth to increase — and 
they cannot be separated — the more fertile soils Avill be cul- 
tivated, the return to labour and the amount of rent will 
both be increased, and the landlord's proportion will be 
diminished. 

In the time of the Plantagenets, the owner of land took the 
whole product, and gave what he pleased to his serf. From 
that day to the present, as population and wealth have in- 
creased, the labourer has obtained a constantly increasing 
control over the application of his labour, and over the dis- 
tribution of the commodities that he produces ; the result of 
which is that the labourer of England, w^here the various 
soils, superior and inferior, are cultivated to an extent else- 
where unknown, receives for his own use a larger proportion, 
and thus exercises more power over the product of his labour, 
than the labourer of any other portion of Europe. At no 
period has his proportion increased so rapidly as within the 
present century, when population has increased at a rate 
before unexampled ; and in no part of England is his propor- 
tion so great as in that in which population has most rapidly 
increased; yet it is precisely there that the lower soils 
have been to the greatest extent brought into cultivation. 
How these facts are to be reconciled to the fashionable doc- 
trine of rent, it is difficult to conceive. Seeing them, it is not 
extraordinary that one of the earliest and most enthusiastic 
admirers of Mr. Ricardo should have found occasion recently 
to reproach him with having furnished no explanation of 
these " miracles." The real " miracle," however, appears 
to us to be the fact that such a doctrine should have obtained 
so extensively, and should have so long continued to obtain. 

Wealth tends to grow more rapidly than population, be- 
cause better soils are brought into cultivation ; and it does 
grow more rapidly, whenever people abandon swords and 
muskets and take to spades and ploughs. Every increase 
in the ratio of wealth to population is attended with an in- 



MAN AND LAND. 67 

crease in the power of the labourer as compared with that 
of landed or other capital. We all see that when ships are 
more abundant than passengers, the price of passage is 
low — and vice versa. When ploughs and horses are more 
plenty than ploughmen, the latter fix the wages, but when 
ploughmen are more abundant than ploughs, the owners of 
the latter determine the distribution of the product of labour. 
When wealth increases rapidly, new soils are brought into 
cultivation, and more ploughmen are wanted. The demand 
for ploughs produces a demand for more men to mine coal and 
smelt iron ore, and the iron-master becomes a competitor for 
the employment of the labourer, who obtains a larger propor- 
tion of the constantly increasing return to labour. He w^ants 
clothes in greater abundance, and the manufacturer becomes 
a competitor with the iron-master and the farmer for his ser- 
vices. His proportion is again increased, and he wants 
sugar, and tea, and coffee, and now the ship-master competes 
with the manufacturer, the iron-master and the farmer : and 
thus with the growth of population and w^ealth there is pro- 
duced a constantly increasing demand for labour ; and its in- 
creased productiveness, and the consequently increased faci- 
lity of accumulating w^ealth are followed necessarily and 
certainly by an increase of the labourer's proportion. His 
wages rise, and the proportion of the capitalist falls, yet now 
the latter accumulates fortune more rapidly than ever, and 
thus his interest and that of the labourer are in perfect har- 
mony with each other. If we desire evidence -of this, it is 
shown in the constantly increasing amount of the rental of 
England, derived from the appropriation of a constantly de- 
creasing proportion of the product of the land : and in the 
enormous amount of railroad tolls compared with those of the 
turnpike : yet the railroad transports the farmer's wheat to 
market, and brings back sugar and coffee, taking not one- 
fourth as large a proportion for doing the business as was 
claimed by the owner of the w^agon and horses, and him of 
the turnpike. The labourer's product is increased, and the 



68 MAN AND LAND. 

proportion that goes to the capitalist is decreased. The 
power of the first over the product of his labour has grown, 
while that of the latter has diminished. 

Nothing is more frequent than references to those " good 
old times," when the labourer obtained food more readily than 
at present, but no idea can be more erroneous. The whole 
quantity of food at this time consumed in England is at the 
lowest estimate sixty times as great as in the days of Ed- 
ward III., while the population is but little more than six 
times greater. Divided among the whole people, the ave- 
rage per head would be ten times as great, in quantity, with- 
out taking into account the difference of quality. In those 
days of barbarous wassail, the waste among the nobles and 
their followers was prodigiously great. In our day economy 
prevails everywhere, and it prevails necessarily, for as the 
standard of living rises with the increase of production, the 
proportio7i that falls to the land, or to capital in any other 
form, tends to decrease. Increase of wealth tends therefore 
to beget economy, and economy begets wealth ; and the more 
fertile the soil cultivated the greater will be the power of the 
labourer, and the greater the necessity for economy on the 
part of those who represent landed or other capital, and who 
do not themselves work. The proportion now consumed by 
the wealthy and their attendants — by those who consume 
and do not produce — is very small compared with what it 
was in those " good old times," and therefore the proportion 
going to the labourer is very large, while the quantity to be 
divided is so greatly increased. The great mass of the pre- 
sent large product goes directly to the tables of those who 
work, while a very small proportion of it is prepared for 
the tables of those who do not work, and even of that a large 
portion is eaten at last by people whose position in society 
renders employment desirable. The Queen eats less in 
weight than the man who mines the coal that is used in her 
palace. Lord John Russell consumes less than any London 



MAN AND LAND. 69 

porter, and Sir Robert Peel is, we doubt not, outdone by 
most of his servants. 

Of the mass of food provided for the people of Eng- 
land, nine-tenths are eaten by the labouring class. If any 
be disposed to deny that this view is correct, let them 
endeavour to satisfy themselves what else becomes of it. 
That the whole is eaten is certain. That the class who do 
not labour is small, and that they cannot consume much 
more, per head, than others, are equally certain ; and if so, 
it must be obvious that the proportion which their consumption 
bears to the quantity consumed must be very small indeed ; 
and equally so that what they do not eat must be eaten by 
the great class who do labour. 

Such is likewise the case with clothing. The quantity 
consumed is thousands of times greater than it was at the 
period to which we have referred, and it is chiefly consumed 
by the class who work. Ladies and gentlemen buy more 
than colliers and farm-labourers, but they do not wear out as 
much. They change frequently, but their cast-off clothes 
pass from hand to hand and are worn out by those who 
work. In no part of Europe is the mass of rent, or of pro- 
fits of capital employed otherwise than on land, so great as 
there : yet in none do the people who pay that rent, or those 
profits — those who work — enjoy so large an amount of the 
conveniences, comforts, and enjoyments of life. In none is 
there so great a tendency to an increase of the labourer's 
proportion, — of his power over the product of his labour, — 
while in none is the quantity to be divided so great. In 
none, therefore, is there so great a tendency to elevation and 
equality of physical, moral, intellectual and political condi- 
tion, because in none do wealth and population grow so ra- 
pidly, facilitating the cultivation of the lower and more produc- 
tive soils. In no time past has there been so rapid an in- 
crease as now. Never has the tendency to cultivate those 
soils been so great, and yet never has the product of labour 
increased in so great a ratio : and never has the proportion 



70 MAN AND LAND. 

of the landlord so rapidly diminished. Were the doctrine 
of Mr. Ricardo true, such " miracles" could not happen. 
The following table of the results of the two systems may be 
compared by the reader with what is now passing before his 
eyes, and he may then determine for himself which is most 
in accordance with the facts. 







EICABDO'S 


DOCTRINE.* 




OBSERVATIOir. 








Power of 


Power of 




Power of 


Power of 








Land. 


Labour. 




Land. 


Labour. 


First period 


100 





100 


30 


20 


10 


Second 




190 


10 


180 


70 


42 


28 


Third 




270 


30 


240 


120 


60 


60 


Fourth 




340 


60 


280 


180 


80 


100 


Fifth 




400 


100 


300 


250 


100 


150 


Sixth 




450 


150 


300 


330 


120 


210 


Seventh 




490 


210 


280 


420 


140 


280 


Eighth 




520 


280 


240 


510 


155 


355 


Ninth 




540 


360 


180 


620 


170 


450 


Tenth 




550 


450 


100 


740 


180 


560 


Eleventh 




550 


550 


00 


870 


190 


680 



The fifth proposition is, that wealth tends to counteract 
these laws, and to prevent the necessity for resorting to less 
productive soils, by producing improvements in cultivation. 
This proposition was interpolated by Mr. Eicardo into his 
system, because of the absolute necessity for leaving a place 
of escape for some of the thousand exceptions to his laws that 
presented themselves to his consideration, and its presence 
there is a direct admission of the unsoundness of his whole 
doctrine. 

Wealth should grow, according to Mr. Ricardo, most rapidly 
when and where land is most abundant, and when and 
where the best soils only are cultivated. That his followers 
think so, is obvious from the fact that they, one and all, attri- 
bute the rapid growth of wealth in the United States to the 
abundance of land. Improvements of cultivation should, 
then, be most rapid where land is most abundant, but such 

* See page 22. 



MAN AND LAND. 71 

has not been the case in England, nor is it now in any coun- 
try of Europe. On the contrary, wealth grows more rapidly 
at this moment, when resort is daily had to the lower and 
more distant soils, than it has done in any time past, and the 
only manner in which it promotes improvements in cultiva- 
tion is in facilitating the resort to those soils. The plough 
enables the farmer to go deep into the lower soil. The 
spade enables him to reach the marl. The wagon enables 
him to transport it. The railroad enables him to bring the 
coal to the lime, and thus facilitates the compounding of a 
new soil: and with each new one thus brought into activity 
the produce of labour and the growth of wealth should dimi- 
nish, and therewith we ought to see a diminished power of 
effecting such improvements ; yet with every extension of 
cultivation the power of man over the various soils is seen to 
increase. The new soils are better than the old ones, or 
they are worse. If the first, Mr. Ricardo's theory is false. 
If the second, then with every soil that is cultivated, the power 
of accumulation must diminish, and as population still goes 
on to increase, the necessity for applying labour with dimi- 
nished return must go on, let man do what he may to pre- 
vent it. The law of nature in regard to the production of 
food can no more be arrested than that in relation to the 
gravitation of matter. All her laws are simple and univer- 
sally true. That of Mr. Ricardo is complex and universally 
false. Had it been otherwise, he would have experienced no 
necessity for providing escape-valves for troublesome facts. 



The sixth and last proposition is, that every such improve- 
ment tends to retard the increase of rent, while every obsta- 
cle to improvement tends to accelerate that increase ; and 
that, therefore, the interests of the landlord and the labourer 
are always in opposition to each other. 

If men commence with the cultivation of the most fertile 



72 MAN AND LAND. 

soils, and if with the progress of population there does arise a 
necessity for resorting to those of less fertility, yielding a con- 
stantly decreasing return to labour, such must be the case. 
The slower the increase in the supply of food, the more 
rapid will be the increase in the power of the owner of land 
in cultivation, and the greater will be the tendency to starva- 
tion and disease among those who work.* The landlord wdll 
take a constantly increasing proportion, and the labourer must 
eventually become his slave, thankful to be allowed to live 
and work, even although compelled to live on acorn-bread. 
Mr. Ricardo has, here, carried out his doctrine to its legiti- 
mate results, and those results must be reached at some fu- 
ture day, if his theory is correct. It signifies nothing to say 
that the downward progress may be arrested. Man must be 
always tending in that direction, and there must he arrive at 
last : even if it be a thousand years hence. f The experience 
of England and of Europe for thousands of years past, and 
that of America for the last three centuries, would lead us to 
opposite conclusions, but Mr. Ricardo says that such is the 
law. If so, when is it to begin to become operative ? We 
know of no other of the natural laws thus hung up in ter- 
rorem over man : none, the action of which is thus sus- 
pended, in order that it may at some future time fall with 
a force increased immeasurably during the period of suspen- 
sion. Population is growing daily, and with great rapidity, 
and the necessity for resorting to less productive soils must 
be increasing with every hour ; yet man is permitted to go on 
to increase his species, in blind and blissful ignorance of the 
fact that his children, grandchildren, or great grandchildren 



* " How slow soever the increase of population, provided that of capital 
be still slower, [believed by Mr. Mill to be the case,] wages will be reduced so 
low that a portion of the population will regularly die from the consequences 
of want."— ilfiZZ. 

•{- " From the operation of fixed and permanent causes, the increasing steri- 
lity of the soil is sure, in the long run, to overmatch the improvements that 
occur in machinery and agriculture, prices experiencing a corresponding rise, 
and profits a corresponding fall." — McCulloch. 



MAN AND LAND. 73 

must inevitably see themselves deprived of the means of sub- 
sistence, while owners of land are to revel in abundance 
greater than ever before : the one class becoming masters and 
the other slaves. 

If, on the contrary, cultivation commences invariably on the 
poorer soils and proceeds to the better, the reverse must be 
the case, and every improvement must tend to accelerate the 
growth of rent ; and every obstacle to improvement, be it 
what it may, must tend to arrest that growth ; and therefore 
must the interests of the landlord and those of the labourer 
be in perfect harmony with each other. Improvement of 
cultivation results from the increase of wealth. The more 
spades and ploughs, and the better their quality, the larger 
is the return to labour, and the greater is the rent. The 
more horses and cattle, the larger is the return to labour, and 
the greater is the rent. The more steam-engines, the easier is 
the work of drainage, the larger is the return to labour, and the 
greater is the rent. The more mills, the easier is the conver- 
sion of the grain into flour, the larger is the return to labour, 
and the greater is the rent. The more factories, the less is the 
labour required to procure a supply of clothing, the greater 
is the quantity that may be given to improving the land by 
making drains, roads, bridges and school-houses, the larger 
is the return to labour, and the greater is the rent. The in- 
terests of the landlord would seem therefore to be directly 
promoted by every measure that tends to augment the wealth 
of the nation and to aid in the improvement of cultivation. 

How stands it with the labourer ? He sees that with every 
increase in the number and quality of spades and ploughs : 
of engines and roads : of mills and factories : his labour be- 
comes more productive. Again, he sees that with every in- 
crease in the ratio which spades and ploughs, engines and 
mills, bear to the men by whom they are to be employed, he 
takes a larger proportion ; and that whereas, when the land 
in cultivation yielded a net product of six bushels to the 
acre, the owner took half, or more, leaving him three, or less ; 



74 MAN AND LAND. 

now when it yields forty bushels, he takes but one-fifth, leav- 
ing him thirty-two. Hejeels, therefore, at every instant of 
his progress, that his interests are, like those of the landlord, 
directly advanced by every measure tending to the augmen- 
tation of wealth, and to the promotion of improvements in 
cultivation. 

Here w^e have perfect harmony of interests, and it is only 
necessary that the two parties should fully understand that 
it exists, to have all unite in the removal of restrictions that 
tend to expel capital by rendering it unproductive ; and to 
expel labour, to be employed elsewhere less productively 
than it might be employed at home, if aided by that capital. 
This understood, kindness and good feeling would take the 
place of jealousy and discord. The few would no longer be- 
lieve that their interests were to be promoted by the waste of 
wealth on large fleets and armies ; and the many would cease 
to feel that they were borne down by taxes. Wealth would 
increase more rapidly, as would the power of production and 
consumption. Neighbouring nations would be unwilling to 
lose rich customers, and equally unwilling to be deprived of 
their accustomed supplies of commodities needed for the 
gratification of their wants, and would carefully avoid all 
cause of hostility. The harmony of classes would thus be- 
get the harmony of nations. The love of peace would dif- 
fuse itself throughout the earth. All would become satisfied 
that in the laws which govern the relations of man with his 
fellow man, there reigns the same beautiful simplicity and 
harmony everywhere else so abundantly evident : all by de- 
grees would learn that their own interests would be best pro- 
moted by respecting in others those rights of person and pro- 
perty that they desired to have respected in themselves : and 
all become, at length, satisfied that the whole of the so- 
called Science of Political Economy is embraced in the 
brief words of the great founder of Christianity, ««Do unto 
others as ye would that others should do unto you." 

Mr. Ricardo's system is one of discords. Its parts do not 



MAN AND LAND. 75 

agree with each other, and its whole tends to the production 
of hostility among classes and nations. He professes free 
trade, while teaching that the monopoly of land is in ac- 
cordance with the laws of nature. He professes a love for 
freedom of action, while teaching that if men and women 
will unite themselves together in marriage, thus doing that 
which tends most to stimulate them to exertion for the im- 
provement of their condition, physical, moral, intellectual, 
and political, the consequence must be an increasing tendency 
to starvation : and thus he affords countenance to the thousand 
restrictions by which marriage is prevented and profligacy 
promoted. He is for free trade in corn, but he teaches the 
landlord that his interests will be injured by it. He is for 
promoting the growth of wealth, but he informs the landlord 
that all wealth appropriated to the improvement of culti- 
vation must diminish the progress of rent. He would 
have the rights of property respected, while teaching the 
labourer that the interests of the land-owner are to be 
promoted by every measure tending to produce starvation 
and misery ; and that rent is paid because of an exercise of 
power on the part of the few, who have appropriated to them- 
selves that which a beneficent Deity intended for the com- 
mon good of all. His book is the true manual of the dema- 
gogue, who seeks power by means of agrarianism, war, and 
plunder. The lessons which it teaches are inconsistent with 
those afforded by the study of all well observed facts, and 
inconsistent even with themselves; and the sooner they shall 
come to be discarded the better will it be for the interests of 
landlord and tenant, manufacturer and mechanic, and man- 
kind at large. 

The PAST says to the landlord of the present : << Study 
economy, private and public. Give your mind to the ma- 
nagement of the treasure of materials placed in your hands. 
Permit wealth to grow, and your rents will rise, while you 
will be surrounded by happy and prosperous people. You 
will lose in power, but you will gain in happiness." 



76 MAN AND LAND. 

To the labourer it says: *< Economize your time, your la- 
bour, and their proceeds. Improve your mind. Study to 
promote the growth of wealth, and your labour will become 
more productive, while your power over its product will 
increase, and you wall experience a steady improvement in 
your physical, moral, intellectual, and political condition." 

To all it says : <« Respect the rights of your neighbour, as 
)^ou would desire that he should respect your own." To all 
it says: ^« I have sinned. I have failed to respect the rights 
of others, and I have suffered heavily in consequence. Take 
warning by my example." 



MAN AND FOOD. 77 



CHAPTER II. 

MAN AND FOOD. 

Man commences by cultivating the poor soils. He works 
alone, and his labour is unproductive. As his numbers 
increase he is enabled to combine his exertions with those 
of his fellow-men, and to subdue to cultivation the better 
soils, obtaining a constantly increasing return to his labour; 
enabling him, while consuming more and better food, to 
accumulate more rapidly the machinery required to facilitate 
his farther progress. 

The prevailing doctrine of the time is that of Mr. Malthus, 
who teaches — 

I. That population tends to increase with great rapidity. 

II. That the tendency to increase in the supply of food is 
less than in the numbers of mankind. 

III. That with every step in the progress of population 
there is a tendency to starvation. 

IV. That improvements in cultivation may increase pro- 
duction, but that they are invariably followed by a still more 
rapid increase of population, neutralizing their effect by com- 
pelling a resort to less productive soils. 

V. That the remedies provided by nature for preventing 
this excess of population over food, are war, pestilence, fa- 
mine, vice, and misery, to be avoided only by the exercise 
of that moral restraint which shall tend to diminish the 
growth of the numbers of mankind. 

The time may arrive when the world will be so fully occu- 
pied that there will not be even standing room, but we may 
safely leave that distant future to the benevolent care of the 
Deity. We know well that there is now, and always has 
been, an abundance of unoccupied land; and the question to 

7- 



78 MAN AND FOOD. 

be settled is : What are the phenomena which in time past 
have attended the increase of mankind up to the present point : 
with a view to determine what are those which may be ex- 
pected to mark the farther progress of our race towards the oc- 
cupation of that almost infinite extent of soil capable of yielding 
food, which in both old and new countries yet remains un- 
occupied and unproductive. Mr. Malthus thought he saw 
that they were such as indicated " a constant effort in the 
population to increase beyond the means of subsistence," as 
constantly tending <'to subject the lower classes of society 
to distress, and to prevent any great permanent melioration 
of their condition;" and this effort appeared to him quite 
as obviously to exist in countries in which the population 
was but one to the square mile, as in those in which it 
amounted to a hundred. Of course his theory refers, not to 
the state of things which may be supposed to arise when the 
whole earth shall come to be occupied, but to that which now 
exists and has existed for centuries past. In support of 
these views his book furnishes an infinite number of small 
facts, while the great and really important ones are totally 
overlooked. His work throughout wants breadth. His 
theory is, nevertheless, perfectly sound, if men commence 
the work of cultivation with the rich soils, and proceed down- 
wards to the poor ones. If, however, they always com- 
mence with the thin, dry soils, and always proceed onward 
to the rich ones, then the reverse thereof must be true, and 
food must tend to increase faster than population, permitting 
wealth to increase, and combination of action to arise as men 
are enabled to live in closer connection with each other. 

The first cultivator can neither roll nor raise a log, with 
which to build himself a house. He makes himself a hole 
in the ground, which serves in lieu of one. He cultivates 
the poor soil of the hills to obtain a little corn, with which 
to eke out the supply of food derived from snaring the game 
in his neighbourhood. His winter's supply is deposited in 
another hole, liable to injury from the water which filters 



MAN AND FOOD. 79 

through the light soil into which alone he can penetrate.* 
He is in hourly danger of starvation. At length, however, 
his sons grow up. They combine their exertions with his, 
and now obtain something like an axe and a spade. They 
can sink deeper into the soil; and can cut logs, and build 
something like a house. They obtain more corn and more 
game, and they can preserve it better. The danger of 
starvation is diminished. Being no longer forced to depend 
for fuel upon the decayed wood which alone their father 
could use, they are in less danger of perishing from cold in 
the elevated ground which, from necessity, they occupy. 
"With the growth of the family new soils are cultivated, each 
in succession yielding a larger return to labour, and they 
obtain a constantly increasing supply of the necessaries of 
life from a surface diminishing in its ratio to the number to 
be fed; and thus with every increase in the return to their 
labour the power of combining their exertions is increased. 

If we look now to the solitary settler of the west, even 
where provided with both axe and spade, w^e shall see him 
obtaining, with extreme difficulty, the commonest log hut. 
A neighbour arrives, and their combined efforts produce a 
new house with less than half the labour required for the 
first. That neighbour brings a horse, and he makes some- 
thing like a cart. The product of their labour is now ten 
times greater than was that of the first man working by 
himself. More neighbours come, and new houses are wanted. 
A " bee" is made, and by the combined effort of the neigh- 
bourhood the third house is completed in a day; whereas the 
first cost months, and the second weeks, of far more severe 
exertion. These new neighbours have brought ploughs and 
horses, and now better soils are cultivated, and the product 
of labour is again increased, as is the power to preserve the 
surplus for winter's use. The path becomes a road. Ex- 

* The caches of the savages of the Rocky Mountains, and the silos of the 
people of Castile, are instances of this course of proceeding. 



80 MAN AND FOOD. 

changes begin. The store makes its appearance. Labour 
is rewarded by larger returns, because aided by better ma- 
chinery applied to better soils. The town grows up. Each 
successive addition to the population brings a consumer and 
a producer. The shoemaker wants leather and corn in ex- 
change for his shoes. The blacksmith requires fuel and food, 
and the farmer w^ants shoes for his horses ; and with the 
increasing facility of exchange more labour is applied to 
production, and the reward of labour rises, producing new 
wants, and requiring more and larger exchanges. The road 
becomes a turnpike, and the wagon and horses are seen 
upon it. The town becomes a city, and better soils are cul- 
tivated for the supply of its markets, while the railroad facili- 
tates exchanges with towns and cities more distant. The 
tendency to union and to combination of exertion thus grows 
with the growth of w^ealth. In a state of extreme poverty it 
cannot be developed. The insignificant tribe of savages that 
starves on the product of the upper soil of hundreds of thou- 
sands of acres of land, looks w^ith jealous eyes on every 
intruder, knowing that each new mouth requiring to be fed 
tends to increase the difficulty of obtaining subsistence ; 
whereas the farmer rejoices in the arrival of the blacksmith 
and the shoemaker, because they come to eat on the spot the 
corn which heretofore he has carried ten, twenty, or thirty 
miles to market, to exchange for shoes for himself and his 
horses. With each new consumer of his products that arrives 
he is enabled more and more to concentrate his action and 
his thoughts upon his home, while each new arrival tends to 
increase his power of consuming commodities brought from 
a distance, because it tends to diminish his necessity for seek- 
ing at a distance a market for the produce of his farm. Give 
to the poor tribe spades, and the knowledge how to use them, 
and the power of association will begin. The supply of 
food becoming more abundant, they hail the arrival of the 
stranger who brings them knives and clothing to be ex- 



MAN AND FOOD. 81 

changed for skins and corn ; wealth grows, and the habit of 
association — the first step towards civilization — arises. 

The little tribe is, however, compelled to occupy the high- 
land. The lowlands are occupied by dense forests and 
dreary swamps, while at the foot of the hill runs a river, ford- 
able but for a certain period of the year. On the hill side, 
distant a few miles, is another tribe; but communication be- 
tween them is difficult, because, the river bottom being yet 
uncleared, roads cannot be made, and bridges are as yet 
unthought of. Population and wealth, however, continue to 
increase, and the lowlands come gradually into cultivation, 
yielding a larger return to labour, and enabling the tribe to 
obtain larger supplies of food with less exertion, and to spare 
labour to be employed for other purposes. Roads are made 
in the direction of the river bank. Population increases 
more rapidly because of the increased supplies of food and 
the increased power of preserving it, and wealth grows still 
more rapidly. The river bank at length is reached, and 
some of the best lands are now cleared. Population grows 
again, and a new element of wealth is seen in the form of a 
bridge, and now the two little communities are enabled to 
communicate more freely with each other. One rejoices in 
the possession of a wheelwright, while the other has a wind- 
mill. One wants carts, and the other has corn to grind. One 
has hides to spare, while the other has more shoes than are 
required for their use. Exchanges increase, and the litde 
towns grow because of the increased amount of trade. Wealth 
grows still more rapidly, because of new" modes of combining 
labour, by which that of all is rendered more productive. 
Roads are now made in the direction of other communi- 
ties; and the work is performed more rapidly, because the 
exertions of the two are now combined, and because the 
machinery used is more efficient. One after another disap- 
pear forests and swamps that have occupied the fertile 
lands, separating ten, twenty, fifty, or five hundred commu- 
nities, which now are brought into connection with each 



82 MAN ANC FOOD. 

other; and with each step labour becomes more and more 
productive, and is rewarded with better food, clothing, and 
shelter. Famine and disease disappear ; life is prolonged ; 
population is increased, and therewith the tendency to that 
combination of exertion among the individuals composing 
these communities, which is the distinguishing characteristic 
of civilization in all periods of the world, and in all nations. 
With further increase of population and wealth, the desires of 
man, and his ability to gratify them, both increase. The 
nation, thus formed, has more corn than it wants ; but it has 
no cotton, and its supply of wool is insufficient. The neigh- 
bouring nation has cotton and wool, and wants corn. They 
are still divided, however, by broad forests, deep swamps, 
and rapid rivers. Population increases, and the great forests 
and swamps disappear, giving place to rich farms, through 
which broad roads are made, with immense bridges, which 
enable the merchant to transport his w^ool and his cotton to 
exchange with his now rich neighbours for their surplus 
corn or clothing. Nations now combine their exertions, and 
wealth grows with still increased rapidity, facilitating the 
drainage of marshes and thus bringing into activity the richest 
soils; while coal mines cheaply furnish the fuel for converting 
limestone into lime, and iron ore into axes and spades, and 
into rails for the new roads that are needed to transport to 
market the vast products of the fertile soils now in use, and 
to bring back the large supplies of clothing, sugar, tea, coffee, 
and the thousand other products of distant lands with which 
intercourse now exists. At each step population and wealth, 
and happiness and prosperity, take a new bound; and men 
realize with difficulty the fact that the country which now 
affords to tens of millions all the necessaries, comforts, con- 
veniences, and luxuries of life, is the same that, when the 
superabundant land was occupied by tens of thousands only, 
gave to that limited number scanty supplies of the worst food : 
so scanty that famines were frequent and sometimes so se- 
vere that starvation was followed in its wake by pestilence, 



MAN AND FOOD. 83 

which, at brief intervals, swept from the earth the population 
of the little and scattered settlements, among which the 
people were forced to divide themselves when they cultivated 
only the poor soils of the hills. 

Such is the course of events, when man is allowed to fol- 
low the bent of his inclinations, which, however, he rarely is. 
When men are poor, they are compelled to select such soils 
as they can cultivate, not such as they would. Although 
gathered around the sides of the same mountain range, they 
are far distant from each other. They have no roads, and 
they are unable to associate for self-defence. The thin soils 
yield small returns, and the little tribe embraces some who 
would prefer to live by the labour of others rather than 
by their own. The scattered people may be plundered 
with ease, and half a dozen men, combined for the pur- 
pose, may rob in succession all the members of the little 
community. The opportunity makes the robber. The bold- 
est and most determined becomes the leader of the gang. 
One by one, the people who use spades are plundered by 
those who carry swords, and who pass their leisure in dissi- 
pation. The leader divides the spoil, taking the largest 
share himself, with which, as the community increases, he 
hires more followers. He levies black mail on those who 
work, taking such portion as suits his good pleasure. With 
the gradual increase of the little community, he commutes 
with them for a certain share of their produce, which he calls 
rent, or tax, or taille. Population and wealth grow very 
slowly, because of the large proportion which the non-la- 
bourers bear to the labourers. The good soils are very 
slowly improved, because the people are unable to obtain 
axes or spades with which to w^ork, or to make roads into 
the dense forests. Few want leather, and there is no tanner 
on the spot to use their hides. Few can afford shoes, and 
there is no shoemaker to eat their corn while making the few 
that can be bought. Few have horses, and there is no black- 
smith. Combination of effort has scarcely an existence. By 



84 MAN AND FOOD. 

very slow degrees, however, they are enabled to reduce to 
cultivation better lands, and to lessen the distance between 
themselves and the neighbouring settlement, where rules an- 
other little sovereign. Each chief, however, now covets the 
power of taxing, or collecting rents from the subjects of his 
neighbour. War ensues. Each seeks plunder, and calls 
it "glory." Each invades the domain of the other, and 
each endeavours to weaken his opponent by murdering his 
rent-payers, burning their houses, and wasting their little 
farms, while manifesting the utmost courtesy to the chief 
himself. The tenants fly to the hills for safety, being there 
more distant from the invaders. Rank weeds grow up in the 
rich lands thus abandoned, and the drains fill up. At the 
end of a year or two, peace is made, and the work of clear- 
ing is again to be commenced. Population and wealth have, 
however, diminished, and the means of recommencing the 
work have again to be created. Meanwhile the best lands 
are covered with shrubs, and the best meadows are under 
water. With continued peace, the work, however, advances, 
and after a few years, population and wealth, and cultiva- 
tion, attain the same height as before. New wars ensue, for 
the determination of the question which of the two chiefs 
shall collect all the — so-called — rent. After great waste of 
life and property, one of them is killed, and the other falls 
his heir, having thus acquired both glory and plunder. He 
now wants a title, by which to be distinguished from those 
by whom he is surrounded. He is a little king. Similar 
operations are performed elsewhere, and kings become nu- 
merous. By degrees, population extends itself, and each lit- 
tle king covets the dominions of his neighbours. Wars ensue 
on a somewhat larger scale, and always with the same re- 
sults. The people invariably fly to the hills for safety. As 
invariably, the best lands are abandoned. Food becomes 
scarce, and famine and pestilence sweep ofi" those whose 
flight had saved them from the swords of the invader. Small 
kings become greater ones, surrounded by lesser chiefs 



MAN AND FOOD. 85 

who glorify themselves in the number of their murders, and 
in the amount of plunder they have acquired. Counts, vis- 
counts, earls, marquises, and dukes, now make their appear- 
ance on the stage, heirs of the power and of the rights of 
the robber chiefs of early days. Population and wealth go 
backward, and the love of title grows with the growth of bar- 
barism.* Wars are now made on a larger scale, and greater 
" glory" is acquired. In the midst of distant and highly fer- 
tile lands occupied by a numerous population, are rich cities 
and towns offering a copious harvest of plunder. The citizens, 
unused to arms, may be robbed with impunity, always an 
important consideration to those with whom the pursuit of 
"glory" is a trade. Provinces are laid waste, and the 
population is exterminated, or if a few escape, they fly to 
the hills and mountains, there to perish of famine. Peace 
follows, after years of destruction, but the rich lands are 
overgrown : the spades and axes, the cattle and the sheep 
are gone : the houses are destroyed : their owners have 
ceased to exist : and a long period of abstinence from the 
work of desolation is required to regain the point from which 
cultivation had been driven by men intent upon the gratifi- 
cation of their own selfish desires, at the cost of the welfare 
and happiness of the people over whose destinies they have 
unhappily ruled. Population grows slowly, and wealth but 
little more rapidly, for almost ceaseless wars have impaired the 
disposition and the respect for honest labour, while the neces- 

* It is amusing to trace with each step in the progress of the decay of the 
Roman Empire, the gradual increase in the magnificence of titles : and so again 
with the decline of modern Italy. In France, titles became almost universal as 
the wars of religion harbarized the people. The high-sounding titles of the East 
are in keeping with the weakness of those by whom they are assumed, as are 
the endless names of the Spanish grandee with the poverty of the soil culti- 
vated by his dependents. The time is fast approaching when men of real dig- 
nity will reject the whole system as an absurdity, and when small men alone 
will think themselves elevated by the title of Esquire, Honourable, Baron, 
Marquis, or Duke. Extremes always meet. The son of the duke rejoices in 
the possession of half a dozen Christian names, and the little retailer of tea 
and sugar calls his daughter Amanda Malvina Fitzallan — Smith, or Pratt : 
while the gentleman calls his son Robert, or John. 

8 



86 MAN AND FOOD. 

sity for beginning once more the work of cultivation on the 
poor soils, adds to the distaste for work, while it limits the 
power of employing labourers. Swords or muskets are held 
to be more honourable implements than spades and pickaxes. 
The habit of union for any honest purpose is almost ex- 
tinct, while thousands are ready, at any moment, to join in 
expeditions in search of plunder. War thus feeds itself by 
producing poverty, depopulation, and the abandonment of 
the most fertile soils ; while peace also feeds itself, by increas- 
ing the number of men and the habit of union, because of 
the constantly increasing power to draw supplies of food 
from the surface already occupied, as the almost boundless 
powers of the earth are developed in the progress of popula- 
tion and wealth. 

These views are not in accordance with the doctrine of 
Mr. Malthus, yet look where we may, we shall find confir- 
mation of their truth. If to India, we may see the rich soil 
relapsing into jungle, while its late occupant starves among 
the forts of the hills. If to other parts of Asia, we may see 
abandoned the rich countries on the banks of the Tigris, and 
of the Euphrates, while poor and barren Persia is still cul- 
tivated. If to Egypt, we may trace with its advance the 
gradual descent of population towards the Nile, bringing into 
activity the rich lands of the Delta: and with its decline, the 
abandonment of those lands, the filling up of the canals, and 
the concentration of the population on the higher and less 
productive lands. If to Italy, we see a growing people 
subduing to cultivation the rich lands of the Campagna 
and of Latium, to be again gradually abandoned, and now 
affording miserable subsistence to men, many of whom 
gO'Clothed in skins of beasts, and whose number scarcely 
exceeds that of the cities that once there flourished. If we 
pass farther north, we may see the rich lands of the Sien-^ 
nese republic in cultivation until the sixteenth century, 
when the ferocious Marignan drove to the hills the small rem- 
nant of the population that escaped the sword, and gave to 



MAN AND FOOD. 8^ 

the world a pestilential desert, in lieu of the highly culti- 
vated farms which before abounded. Still further north, 
may be seen the destruction of the canals of Pisa and the 
abandonment of its fertile soils, while its late inhabitants 
perish by pestilence within the city walls, or transfer them- 
selves to the head of the Arno, to seek there the subsist- 
ence no longer afforded by the richer lands near its mouth. 
In France, we may see the perpetual ravage of the rich 
lands of the south by the ferocious tribes of the north, from 
the days of Clovis down to the period of the revocation of 
the Edict of Nantes, and at every fresh invasion, the people 
are seen flying to the hills and mountains for safety. In 
the days of the English wars, we may see the lower and 
richer countries ravaged by bands of fierce mountaineers : the 
wild Breton, the ferocious Gascon, and the mercenary Swiss : 
united for the plunder of the men who cultivated the more 
fertile soils, and driving them to seek refuge in the wild and 
savage Brittany itself. We may see the lands of the richer 
soils rendered utterly desolate : la Beauce, one of the most 
fertile parts of the kingdom, become again a forest : while 
from Picardy to the Rhine not a house, unprotected by city 
walls, is left standing, nor a farm that is not stripped. In 
later times we see Lorraine reduced to a desert : and fine 
forests but recently stood, if even now they have ceased to 
stand, where formerly the rich soil yielded liberal returns to 
labour. Throughout France are seen the effects of per- 
petual war, in the concentration of the whole agricultural 
population in filthy villages, at a distance from the lands they 
cultivate : there inhaling a foul atmosphere, and losing half 
their time in transferring themselves, their rough implements, 
and their products, to and from their little properties, where- 
as, the same labour bestowed upon the land itself would give 
to cultivation the richer soils. 

If we trace the external history of that country, we see 
hosts of gentlemen followed by bands of savage Bretons, 
Gxscons, and Swiss: all, noble and gentle, equally greedy 



88 ' MAN AND FOOD. 

and rapacious : engaged for successive centuries in the work 
of plundering and exterminating their neighbours, whose 
wealth enabled them to cultivate the fertile soils : the people 
of the Netherlands and Germany : of Italy and of Catalonia : 
and compelling them to abandon their rich fields and to seek 
refuge within the walls of cities, there to die of famine and 
pestilence. War is thus, everywhere, the trade of the bar- 
barian who cultivates the poor soils and looks with greedy 
eyes upon the wealth of other men, whose honest industry 
and exertion have enabled them to bring into cultivation the 
better soils, with a constantly increasing return to labour. 

If next, we desire to see the countries in which men cul- 
tivate the poorest soils, we must turn to those in which con- 
stant wars and oppression have most prevented the growth 
of wealth and population : to India and Sicily : and there we 
shall find the habit of combined exertion least existing. If 
we cross the Atlantic, and look to Mexico, we may see the 
fertile valley that surrounds the city, and that once afforded 
food for a vast population, now in a state of desolation : 
its canals choked up, and its cultivation abandoned ; while 
from the poorer lands that border the valley, strings of mules 
bring from a distance of fifty miles loads of provisions to 
supply the wants of the city. For a specimen of the next 
class, we must turn to France, whose population requires 
for its duplication above a century ; and whose labourer 
uses poor machinery that enables him to penetrate but little 
into the upper soil, leaving the more fertile soils beneath and 
around him for some future race that shall have learned 
that real glory and grandeur are not to be attained by end- 
less wars.* If now we seek the countries in which the re- 
ward of the labourer most rapidly advances, we must turn 
first to Prussia, that has, since 1763, with the exception 
of the few years that followed the battle of Jena, enjoyed 
the blessings of peace : and there we shall find population 

* « La Gloire est le Dieu de la France," — M. de Beaumont. 



MAN AND FOOD. 89 

and the habit of union advancing with a rapidity unknown 
to the rest of continental Europe. Next, we must look to Eng- 
land, where we shall find vast wealth, the growth of internal 
peace, and a population increasing in numbers with a force 
constantly accelerated as the accumulation of that wealth 
has enabled them to bring into activity the better soils. In 
the days of the Edwards, it numbered two millions and a 
half. In 1700, it but little exceeded five millions. The in- 
crease was small, and the improvement of the condition of 
the people w^as slow. In the first seventy years of the past 
century, the increase was forty per cent. In the follow- 
ing thirty years, it exceeded twenty-five per cent. Popu- 
lation increased rapidly, and with it grew wealth and the 
power and habit of union, and cultivation was extended, 
with a rapid increase in the return to labour. It is now 
doubling itself in forty-six years, thus proceeding with acce- 
lerated force, and with its increase we see more fertile soils 
coming into cultivation, and affording larger returns : giving 
increased wages to the labourer and larger reward to the ca- 
pitalist than is obtained in any other part of Europe. With 
every step in this progress, we see an increase in the habit 
of combined exertion : and an increased tendency towards 
union, personal, political, and economical : perpetually re- 
pressed, however, by the waste consequent upon frequent wars 
produced by an anxiety for " ships, commerce and colonies." 
The jealousy of the Scot and the Saxon has passed away. 
The Welshman and the Englishman, the Highlander and the 
man of the lowlands, have long since ceased to view each 
other with dislike : and the Cornishman and the Yorkshire- 
man have learned at length to speak the same language. 
Lastly, we turn to the United States, which, during more than 
two centuries from the first landing of the Pilgrims, never 
were engaged in war but when forced thereto in self-de- 
fence, and whose history presents a course of peaceful ac- 
tion unparalleled in the world. From a few poor and scat- 
tered settlers, occupying the poor lands along the Atlan- 

8- 



90 MAN AND FOOD. 

tic coast, between whom communication was almost im- 
possible, even if desired : and scarcely desired because 
of differences in their origin, and in their ideas of reli- 
gious and political government : they have grown to a na- 
tion of more than twenty millions, in whom the habit of 
union exists to an extent elsewhere deemed inexplicable :* a 
consequence of the rapid growth of wealth, the fruit of peace 
and honest industry. Beginning necessarily with the poor- 
est soils, they were widely separated from each other. Had 
they, like their neighbours of Canada, been perpetually en- 
gaged in war, they would have remained poor and scattered ; 
but they worked while the others sought alliances with the 
Indians, and prosecuted the work of conquest. Few in num- 
ber, and poor, they still cultivated poor soils, when Eng- 
land was already the wealthiest nation of the world, and had 
the power to bring into activity the best soils,if she would : but 
England preferred a war of twenty years attended with in- 
calculable waste of life and treasure, the result of which is 
that she stands now but second in point of wealth. 

Look where we may, we shall find similar results. If we 
desire to see men in a state of high prosperity, we must turn 
to those countries and to those periods in which their num- 
bers grow. In Italy we shall find it in the days of Ser- 
vius, before Rome undertook the mission of plundering the 
world and exterminating the free population, to be replaced 
by slaves. In Tuscany we shall meet it in the fourteenth 
century, before French princes and nobles had learned to 
interfere in their affairs, expelling the most usefid of her 
citizens, and introducing a habit of war : to result in building 
up the colossal fortune of Cosmo de' Medici, derived chiefly 
from the profit of loans to the state for purposes of war, at 
enormous interest paid out of the proceeds of taxes on 
provisions, and collected at the gates of the city by his own 



* " That tenacious spirit of unity which has hitherto so singularly character- 
ized them." — Edinburv^h Eevieii>. 



MAN AND FOOD. 91 

clerks. In Athens it will be found in the days of Solon and 
the Pisistratidse, before the depopulation and poverty pro- 
duced by Persian armies gave power to men like Cimon 
and Pericles : men who saw in the expenditure of enormous 
taxes for the support of ruinous w^ars, the means of acquiring 
that distinction which otherwise they could never have ob- 
tained. In Egypt, in the days of the Ptolemies, before pro- 
consuls drew from the impoverished inhabitants the means of 
maintaining their canals, to be appHed to the support of the 
profligate and worthless people of Rome. In Spain, on the 
banks of the Guadalquiver, before the fortune of war had given 
power to Isabella and her successors to plunder and extermi- 
nate the industrious and prosperous Moors. In all these cases, 
increasing w^ealth gave man the power to cultivate the better 
soils. If, now", we desire to see man in poverty and distress, 
a prey to famine and pestilence, we must turn to those pe- 
riods in which population decreases ; and be they where they 
may, we shall be sure to find the object of our search. War 
diminishes population, but it destroys wealth. The farmer 
may live to return to his fields; but his house is burned, his 
crops are carried off, his cattle have been killed and eaten, 
and his plough and his harrow broken up; and he returns to 
the city a beggar, to die of famine : for his neighbours are 
like himself. Their property is gone, and they have no 
means of employing him, even as a labourer. Everywhere 
poverty goes in advance of depopulation, w^hile everywhere 
increasing wealth goes far in advance of increasing numbers. 
Such being the case, we may well doubt if war, which 
forces man to abandon the best soils and seek the poorer 
ones, be really the panacea furnished by the Deity for re- 
straining population within the limits of food . It would rather 
seem to be one of the weak *« inventions" of man, for coun- 
teracting the great law of nature which prescribes that if men 
will live well they must labour, and thus provide themselves 
with the machinery necessary for the development of the pro- 
ductive powers of the earth : powers so wonderfully great 



92 MAN AND FOOD. 

that it would be absurd, with our present limited knowledge, 
to attempt a definition of their extent. The use of those 
powers, w^ith increased return to labour, is the reward offered to 
man for good conduct — for the full observance of the great law 
of Christ : and in every country he profits by their use in 
the precise ratio of his obedience. 

Mr. Malthus recommends " moral restraint." Where shall 
it be found ? Certainly not among the Esquimaux, where every 
woman is ready to prostitute herself for a nail, or a bead, — nor 
among the savages of the Rocky Mountains, or those of the 
islands of the Pacific, — nor any where, where population does 
not grow. It prevails to a certain extent in France, in whose 
great city, according to M. Dupin, it is only every third child 
that is a bastard ; but it prevails more in Prussia, where la- 
bour is better rewarded, and men marry more freely ; still 
more in England, where matrimony is still more common ; 
and most in America, where everybody marries. In all 
countries population increases nearly in the ratio of mo- 
rality ; but where marriage is deemed a luxury,* bastards 
will abound, and foundling hospitals will be needed. f The 
remedy of Mr. Malthus would thus appear to produce the dis- 
ease for the cure of which it was intended, and to stimulate, 
instead of repressing, population. 

Population asks only to be let alone, and it will take car 
of itself. Without its growth the power of union cannot 
arise, nor the love of harmony and of peace, essential to the 

* '' The temptation is great to show that the poor have no more right than 
the rich to indulge in luxuries which they cannot afford, and that it is decidedly 
immoral to bring children into the world to starve." — Thornton on Over- 
Population. 

■\ In 1809, the number of foundlings in France was 69,000. Since the 
measure of 1811, (ordering a foundling hospital to be established in each arron- 
dissement,) it has advanced to 84,500, in 1815; to 102,100, in 1820; to 
119,900, in 1825; to 125,000, in 1830; and since then it has advanced with 
a still more remarkable acceleration. (In 1833, it had risen to 129,629.) 
At Paris, the proportion of foundlings to births was as one to ten ; it is now 
little less than one to four. * * * The expense has advanced in a pa- 
rallel proportion to the numbers. It amounts to 1 1,500,000 francs per annum; 
the Paris institution alone costing, some years since, 1,731,239 francs. 



MAN AND FOOD. 93 

promotion of the growth of wealth and to the cultivation of 
the best soils, without which the return to labour cannot be 
large. With its growth production increases, and the la- 
bourer is enabled to take as his reward a larger proportion, 
thus producing a tendency to equality of condition. The 
people have everywhere loved peace, for such were its fruits. 
Their masters have everywhere loved war, because it tended 
to the maintenance of inequality ; yet if they had been go- 
verned by the sense of an enlightened self-interest, they 
would have seen that the injury to themselves was as great 
as was that experienced by the labourers and mechanics by 
whom they were surrounded. 

The PAST says to the sovereigns of the present: "Avoid 
war! It diminishes population and wealth, and union, and 
it tends to reduce nations into tribes. Its apparent grandeur 
is real littleness. It destroys the power of self-protection, in 
which consists real greatness." 

To the representatives of land it says : " Avoid war ! 
It destroys population and wealth, and the value of land is 
dependent upon the growth of both." 

To the labourer it says: "Avoid w^ar ! It destroys wealth 
more rapidly than population. It diminishes your power 
over the product of your labour, and it tends to increase the 
existing inequality of condition." 



94 WEALTH. 



CHAPTER III. 



WEALTH. 



The first cultivator commences his operations on the hill- 
side. Below him are lands upon which have been carried, 
by force of water, the richer portions of those above, as 
well as the leaves of trees, and the fallen trees themselves ; 
all of which have there, from time immemorial, rotted and 
become incorporated with the earth, and thus have been pro- 
duced soils fitted to yield the largest returns to labour : yet 
for this reason are they inaccessible. Their character ex- 
hibits itself in the enormous trees with which they are covered, 
and in their power of retaining the water necessary to aid 
the process of decomposition ; but the poor settler wants the 
power either to clear them of their timber, or to drain them 
of the superfluous moisture. He begins on the hill-side, 
but at the next step we find him descending the hill, and 
obtaining larger returns to labour. He has more food for 
himself, and he has now the means of feeding a horse or an 
ox. Aided by the manure that is thus yielded to him^ by 
the better lands, we see him next retracing his steps, improv- 
ing the hill-side, and compelling it to yield a return double 
that which he at first obtained. With each step down the 
hill, he obtains still larger reward for his labour, and at each 
he returns, with increased power, to the cultivation of the 
original poor soil. He has now horses and oxen, and while, 
by their aid, he extracts from the new soils the manure that 
had accumulated for ages, he has also carts and wagons to 
carry it up the hill : and at each step his reward is increased, 
while his labours are lessened. He goes back to the sand 



WEALTH. 95 

and raises the marl, with which he covers the surface ; 
or he returns to the clay and sinks into the limestone, by 
aid of which he doubles its product. He is all the time 
making a machine which feeds him w^hile he makes it, and 
which increases in its powers the more he takes from it. At 
first it was worthless. It has fed and clothed him for years, 
and now it has a large value, and those who might desire to 
use it would pay him a large rent. 

The earth is a great machine, given to man to be fashion- 
ed to his purpose. The more he fashions it, the better it 
feeds him, because each step is but preparatory to a new 
one more productive than the last; requiring less labour 
and yielding larger return. The labour of clearing is great, 
yet the return is small. The earth is covered with stumps, 
and filled with roots. With each year the roots decay, and 
the ground becomes enriched, while the labour of ploughing 
is diminished. At length, the stumps disappear, and the 
return is doubled, while the labour is less by one-half than 
at first. To forward this process the owner has done nothing 
but crop the ground : nature having done the rest. The aid he 
thus obtains from her yields him as much food as in the out- 
set was obtained by the labour of felling and destroying the 
trees. This, however, is not all. The surplus thus yielded 
has given him means for improving the poorer lands, by 
furnishing manure with which to enrich them ; and thus he 
has trebled his original return without further labour : for 
that which he saves in working the new soils suffices to carry 
the manure to the old ones. He is obtaining a daily in- 
creased power over the various treasures of the earth. 

With every operation connected with the fashioning of the 
earth, the result is the same. The first step is, invariably, 
the most costly one, and the least productive. The first 
drain commences near the stream, where the labour is hea- 
viest. It frees from water but a few acres. A little higher, the 
same quantity of labour, profiting by what has been already 
done, frees twice the number. Again the number is doubled, 



96 WEALTH. 

and now the most perfect system of thorough drainage may 
be estabhshed with less labour than was at first required for 
one of the most imperfect kind. To bring the lime into con- 
nection with the clay, upon fifty acres, is lighter labour than 
was the clearing of a single one, yet the process doubles 
the return for each acre of the fifty. The man who wants a 
little fuel for his own use, expends much labour in opening 
the neighbouring vein of coal. To enlarge this, so as to 
double the product, is a work of comparatively small la- 
bour ; as is the next enlargement, by which he is enabled 
to use a drift-wagon, giving him a return fifty times greater 
than was obtained when he used only his arms, or a wheel- 
barrow. To sink a shaft to the first vein below the surface, 
and erect a steam-engine, are expensive operations; but 
these once accomplished, every future step becomes more 
productive, while less costly. To sink to the next vein 
below, and to tunnel to another, are trifles in comparison 
with the first, yet each furnishes a return equally large. 
The first hne of railroad runs by houses and towns occupied 
by fifty or a hundred thousand persons. Half a dozen little 
branches, costing together far less labour than the first, 
bring into connection with it three hundred thousand, or 
perhaps half a miUion. The trade increases, and a second 
track, a third, or a fourth, may be required. The original 
one facilitates the passage of the materials and the removal 
of obstructions, and three new ones may now be made with 
less labour than was required for the first. 

All labour thus expended in fashioning the great machine 
is but the prelude to the apphcation of further labour, with 
still increased returns. With each such apphcation, wages 
rise, and hence it is that portions of the machine, as it exists, 
invariably exchange, when brought to market, for far less 
labour than they have cost. The man who cultivated the 
thin soils was happy to obtain a hundred bushels for his 
year's work. With the progress of himself and his neigh- 
bour down the hill into the more fertile soils, wages have 



WEALTH. 97 

risen, and two hundred bushels are now required. His farm 
will yield a thousand bushels ; but it requires the labour 
of four men, who must have two hundred bushels each, and 
the surplus is but two hundred bushels. At twenty years 
purchase this gives a capital of four thousand bushels, or the 
equivalent of twenty years' wages ; whereas it has cost, in 
the labour of himself, his sons, and his assistants, the equiva- 
lent of a hundred years of labour, or perhaps far more. 
During all this time, however, it has fed and clothed them 
all, and the farm has been produced by the insensible contri- 
butions made from year to year, unthought of and unfelt.* 

It is now worth twenty years' wages, because its owner 
has for years taken from it a thousand bushels annually ; 
but when it had lain for centuries accumulating wealth, it 
was worth nothing. Such is the case with the earth every- 
where. The more that is taken from it the more there is 
left. When the coal mines of England were untouched, 
they were valueless. Now their value is almost countless ; 
yet the land contains abundant supplies for thousands of 
years. Iron ore, a century since, was a drug, and leases 



* It will be observed that we consider the owner and farmer always as one 
and the same person, and it is when they are so that this operation is the 
most complete, and yet the most insensible. Such it is in the United States. 
All who write of land, in England, talk of the expenditure of capital on land. 
Land asks no such expenditure. It gives capital, when properly treated. In 
that country, the tenant starves it that he may gather up the rent, and if the 
landlord permits a small portion of its gifts to go back to the great producer, he 
considers himself as having given it something, for which it is his debtor. Had 
the tenant been the owner of the ill-treated machine, he would have given it 
twice as much, making no charge ; but, on the contrary, crediting it with 
the portion that he retained for his own consumption. When English land- 
lords talk of spending five and ten pounds per acre, it sounds very grand ; but 
as in all other cases, the real grandeur is in the inverse ratio of that which is 
apparent. The man who cultivates his own land, puts on twice as much ; 
but, he does it from year to year, insensibly, and the land is rendered twice as 
productive by the one operation as by the other. Nature performs all her 
operations slowly and gently, but steadily, and the nearer that man approaches 
her, the more nearly is he right. The man who improves his own land 
works with a long lever, and little power is required ; whereas, the landlord 
works with a short lever, and greater power is needed to produce smaller 
effect. 

9 



98 WEALTH. 

were granted at almost nominal rents. Now, such leases 
are deemed equivalent to the possession of large fortunes, not- 
withstanding the great quantities that have been removed, 
although the amount of ore now known to exist is probably 
fifty times greater than it was then. 

The earth is the sole producer. Man fashions and ex- 
changes. A part of his labour is applied to the fashioning 
of the great machine, and this produces changes that are 
permanent. The drain, once cut, remains a drain ; and the 
limestone, once reduced to lime, never again becomes lime- 
stone. It passes into the food of man and animals, and 
ever after takes its part in the same round with the clay with 
which it has been incorporated. The iron rusts, and gradu- 
ally passes into soil, to take its part with the clay and the 
lime. That portion of his labour gives him wages while pre- 
paring the machine for greater future production. That other 
portion which he expends on fashioning and exchanging the 
products of the machine, produces temporary results, and 
gives him wages alone. Whatever tends, therefore, to dimin- 
ish the quantity of labour necessary for the fashioning and 
exchanging of the products, tends to increase the quantity 
that may be given to increasing the amount of products, and 
to preparing the great machine ; and thus, while increasing 
the present return to labour, preparing for a future further 
increase. 

The first poor cultivator obtains a hundred bushels for 
his year's wages. To pound this between two stones requires 
twenty days of labour, and the work is not half done. Had 
he a mill in the neighbourhood he would have better flour, 
and he would have almost his whole twenty days to bestow 
upon his land. He pulls up his grain. Had he a scythe, he 
would have more time for the preparation of the machine 
of production. He loses his axe, and it requires days of 
himself and his horse on the road, to obtain another. His 
machine loses the time and the manure, both of which would 

ave been saved had the axe-maker been at hand. The real 



m 



WEALTH. 99 

advantage derived from the mill and the scj^the, and from the 
proximity of the axe-maker, consists simply in the power 
which they afford him to devote his labour more and more 
to the preparation of the great machine of production, and 
such is the case with all the machinery of preparation and 
exchange. The plough enables him to do as much in one- 
day as with a spade he could do in five. He saves four days 
for drainage. The steam-engine drains as much as without 
it could be drained by thousands of days of labour. He 
has more leisure to marl and lime his land. The more he 
can extract from his machine the greater is its value, because 
every thing he takes is, by the very act of taking it, 
fashioned to aid further production. The machine, there- 
fore, improves by use ; whereas spades, and ploughs, and 
steam-engines, and all other of the machines used by man, 
are but the various forms into which he fashions parts of the 
great original machine, to disappear in the act of being 
used ; as much so as food, though not so rapidly. The 
earth is the great labour savings' bank ; and the value to man 
of all other machines is in the direct ratio of their tendency 
to aid him in increasing his deposits in the only bank whose 
dividends are perpetually increasing, while its capital is per- 
petually doubling. That it may continue for ever so to do, 
all that it asks is that it shall receive back the refuse of its 
produce : the manure : and that it may do so, the consumer 
and the producer must take their places by each other. That 
done, every change that is effected becomes permanent, and 
tends to facilitate other and greater changes. The whole 
business of the farmer consists in making and improving soils, 
and the earth rewards him for his kindness by giving him 
more and more food the more attention he bestows upon her. 
The solitary settler has to occupy the spots that, with his 
rude machinery, he can cultivate. Having neither horse nor 
cart, he carries home his crop upon his shoulders, as is now 
done in many parts of India. He carries a hide to the place of 
exchange, distant, perhaps, fifty miles, to obtain for it leather, 



100 WEALTH. 

or shoes. Population increases, and roads are made. More 
fertile soils are cultivated. The store and the mill come 
nearer to him, and he obtains shoes and flour with the use 
of less machinery of exchange. He has more leisure for 
the preparation of his great machine, and the returns to la- 
bour increase. More people now obtain food from the same 
surface, and new places of exchange appear. The wool is, 
on the spot, converted into cloth, and he exchanges directly 
with the clothier. The saw-mill is at hand, and he exchanges 
with the sawyer. The tanner gives him leather for his hides, 
and the paper-maker gives him paper for his rags. With 
each of these changes he has more and more of both time 
and manure to devote to the preparation of the great food- 
making machine, and with each year the returns are larger. 
His power to command the use of the machinery of exchange 
increases, but his necessity therefor diminishes ; for with each 
year there is an increasing tendency towards having the con- 
sumer placed side by side with the producer; and with each 
he can devote more and more of his time and mind to the 
business of fashioning the great instrument ; and thus the 
increase of consuming population is essential to the progress 
of production. 

The loss from the use of machinery of exchange is in the 
ratio of the bulk of the article to be exchanged. Food stands 
first; fuel, next; stone for building, third; iron, fourth; 
cotton, fifth ; and so on ; diminishing until we come to laces 
and nutmegs. The raw material is that in the production ot 
which the earth has most co-operated, and by the production 
of which the land is most improved; and the nearer the place 
of exchange or conversion can be brought to the place ot 
production, the less is the loss in the process, and the greater 
the power of accumulating wealth for the production of further 
wealth. 

The man who raises food on his own land is building up 
the machine for doing so to more advantage in the following 
year. His neighbour, to whom it is given, on condition of 



WEALTH. 101 

sitting still, loses a year's work on his machine, and ail he 
has gained is the pleasure of doing nothing. If he has em- 
ployed himself and his horses and wagon in bringing it 
home, the same number of days that would have been required 
for raising it, he has misemployed his time, for his farm is 
unimproved. He has wasted labour and manure. As no- 
body, however, gives, it is obvious that the man who has a 
farm and obtains his food elsewhere, must pay for raising it, 
and pay also for transporting it; and that although he may 
have obtained as good wages in some other pursuit, his farm, 
instead of having been improved by a year's cultivation, is 
worse by a year's neglect ; and that he is a poorer man than 
he would have been had he raised his own food. 

The article of next greatest bulk is fuel. While warming 
his house, he is clearing his land. He would lose by sitting 
idle, if his neighbour brought his fuel to him, and still more 
if he had to spend the same time in hauling it, because he 
would be wearing out his wagon and losing the manure. 
Were he to hire himself and his wagon to another for the 
same quantity of fuel he could have cut on his own property, 
he would be a loser, for his farm would be uncleared. 

If he take the stone from his own fields to build his house, 
he gains doubly. His house is built, and his land is cleared. 
If he sit still, and let his neighbour bring him stone, he loses, 
for his fields remain unfit for cultivation. If he work equally 
hard for a neighbour, and receive the same apparent w^ages, 
he is a loser by the fact that he has yet to remove the stones, 
and until they shall be removed he cannot cultivate his 
land. 

W^ith every improvement in the machinery of exchange, 
there is a diminution in the proportion which that machinery 
bears to the mass of production, because of the extraordinary 
increase of product consequent upon the increased powder of 
applying labour to building up the great machine. It is a 
matter of daily observation that the demand for horses and men 
increases as railroads drive them from the turnpikes, and the 



102 WEALTH. 

reason is, that the farmer's means of improving his land in- 
crease more rapidly than men and horses for his work. The 
man who has, thus far, sent to market his half-fed cattle, 
accompanied by horses and men to drive them, and wagons 
and horses loaded with hay or turnips with which to feed them 
on the road, and to fatten them when at market ; now fattens 
them on the ground, and sends them by railroad ready for 
the slaughter-house. His use of the machinery of exchange 
is diminished nine-tenths. He keeps his men, his horses, and 
his wagons, and the refuse of his hay or turnips, at home. 
The former are employed in ditching and draining, while 
the latter fertilizes the soil heretofore cultivated. His pro- 
duction doubles, and he accumulates rapidly, while the people 
around him have more to eat, more to spend in clothing, and 
accumulate more themselves. He wants labourers in the 
field, and they want clothes and houses. The shoemaker 
and the carpenter, finding that there exists a demand for 
their labour, now join the community, eating the food on the 
ground on which it is produced ; and thus the machinery of 
exchange is improved, while the quantity required is dimi- 
nished. The quantity of flour consumed on the spot induces 
the miller to come and eat his share, while preparing that of 
others. The labour of exchanging is diminished, and more 
is given to the land, and the lime is now turned up. Tons 
of turnips are obtained from the same surface that before gave 
bushels of rye. The quantity to be consumed increases faster 
than the population, and more mouths are needed on the spot, 
and next the woollen-mill comes. The wool no longer requires 
wagons and horses which now are turned to transporting coal, 
to enable the farmer to dispense with his woods, and to re- 
duce to cultivation the fine soil that has, for centuries, pro- 
duced nothing but timber. Production again increases, and 
the new wealth now takes the form of the cotton-mill; and, 
with every step in the progress, the farmer finds new demands 
on the great machine he has constructed, accompanied with 
increased power on his part to build it up higher and stronger, 



WEALTH. 103 

and to sink its foundations deeper. He now supplies beef and 
mutton, wheat, butter, eggs, poultry, cheese, and every other 
of the comforts and luxuries of life, for which the climate is 
suited ; and from the same land which afforded, when his 
father or grandfather first commenced cultivation on the light 
soil of the hills, scarcely sufficient rye or barley to support hfe. 

In the natural course of things, there is a strong tendency 
towards placing the consumer by the side of the producer, 
and thus diminishing the quantity required of the machi- 
nery of exchange ; and wherever that tendency does not 
grow in the ratio of the growth of population, it is a con- 
sequence of some of those weak "inventions" by which 
man so often disturbs the harmony of nature. Wherever 
her laws have most prevailed, such has been the tendency, 
and there have wealth and the power of man over the great 
machine, most rapidly increased. Rent is the price paid 
for the use of that power, and it increases with every dimi- 
nution in the quantity required of the machinery of exchange. 

In Attica, in the days of Solon and the Pisistratidse, wealth 
and population grew rapidly. Cultivation passed from the 
poor to the fertile soils, and the manufacturer of Athens con- 
sumed what was produced by the farmer of Attica. Led, 
unhappily, to meddle in the affairs of Persia, and thus to 
employ a portion of their labour upon the more distant soil of 
Asia, they soon found themselves driven from the better ones 
of Attica to those within the walls of Athens, there to perish of 
starvation. Population and wealth diminished, and thence- 
forward we find them cultivating the lands of distant and 
subject cities, through the medium of their citizens : substi- 
tuting weapons of offence for machinery of production : 
and becoming poor and dissolute. Poverty begets tyranny 
and rapacity, and both beget a love of war. That of the 
Peloponnesus follows. Attica is ruined, and Athens passes 
gradually from poverty to starvation, and at last to ruin. 

Sparta begins with the poor soils. She refuses to permit 
the growth of population or of wealth. She assassinates her 



104 WEALTH. 

slaves, while employing their masters on the distant lands of 
Attica, or of Asia ; w^orking the apparently rich, but speedily 
exhausted, soil of plunder, and neglecting the rich soils at 
home. Poor and rapacious, perfidious and tyrannical, she 
continues ever weak and contemptible, and passes out of ex- 
istence, leaving as her sole bequest to posterity, the record 
of her avarice and her crimes. 

Rome, in the days of Servius, cultivated the fertile soils, 
and population and wealth grew rapidly, with a diminishing 
necessity for the machinery of exchange, as towns and cities 
grew in extent, filled with men engaged in fashioning the pro- 
ducts of the earth, in exchange for the portion of those products 
required for the satisfaction of their wants. His successor 
preferred the distant soils, and employed his subjects in carry- 
ing arms and plundering their neighbours ; and in building 
up great works that were to immortalize him with posterity, 
but which developed none of the powers of the great food-pro- 
ducing machine. The product of labour diminished, and the 
proportion of the few increased, while that of the many dimi- 
nished. Inequality of wealth begot inequality of power, and 
that, in turn, begot a love of the more distant soils, which 
were to be cultivated by force of arms. Passing through Italy 
and Sicily, we find her citizens in Greece ; in Africa, Asia, 
Spain, Gaul and Britain ; thus going from the rich soils to the 
poorer ones, and increasing at every step the necessity for the 
machinery of exchange ; and with each step we find the many 
becoming poorer and more debased, and the few becoming 
greater and more depraved ; until at length, decayed at the 
heart, the empire passes away : having existed for almost a 
thousand years, a model of rapacity, dishonesty, and fraud, 
and having in the whole period produced scarcely a single 
man w^hose name has come down to posterity with an untar- 
nished fame. 

The people of Florence commenced their cultivation on 
the light soils at the head of the Arno. With increasing 
wealth, the products of the land increased : and as food be- 



WEALTH. 105 

came abundant, the fashioner came. Wealth and population 
again increased, and the town became a city : and both again 
grew. Led to involve herself in the wars of the Church, she 
is found cultivating the distant soils of Bologna, Milan, and 
the ghibelline Pisa, and with each remove from home, wealth 
and population diminish, until at length, impoverished and 
depopulated, the better soils pass out of cultivation, and the 
once free and happy people become the slaves of the Medici. 
She increased her machinery of exchange and diminished its 
power. Bows, and swords, and muskets became more nu- 
merous as spades and pickaxes disappeared, and the product 
of the former proved to be far less than had been that of the 
latter. 

Spain expelled that portion of her people which used little 
machinery of exchange, and which therefore had a larger 
proportion of their time to devote to cultivating the powers 
of the great machine. Another portion, with arms in their 
hands, cultivated Sicily, Naples, Tuscany and the Milanese : 
a third, the distant soil of the Netherlands : and a fourth 
those of Peru and Mexico : and thus she increased her 
machinery of exchange while diminishing the product to 
be exchanged. With each step in the process she became 
poorer, and men now may starve in Andalusia while the silos 
of Castile are filled with grain, the mere cost of transportation 
on the backs of mules placing it beyond the reach of the poor 
Andalusian's purse. Her people are still in a state of bar- 
barism, from having been forced to abandon the rich soils, 
and take to the poor ones, having used too much bad machi- 
nery of exchange. 

For more than a thousand years, the sovereigns, nobles, 
and gentlemen of France, have been engaged in the cul- 
tivation of the soils of the Netherlands and Germany, Ca- 
talonia and Piedmont, the Milanese and Naples : and more 
recently they have extended their operations as far as Rus- 
sia ; while Canada and Cayenne, India and Egypt have at 
various Hmes claimed their attention. The study of that 



106 WEALTH. 

nation has been to increase the machinery of exchange, and 
diminish that of production. Swords have abounded while 
spades were rare. Cannon were numerous, wMe roadsj 
scarcely existed. Forts and castles were built by men to 
w^hom grist-mills were machines unknown. Ships of war 
were numerous, but merchant ships were scarce. Camps 
grew and cities decayed. Gentlemen became more nume- 
rous as ploughmen disappeared. The soil they cultivated, 
however, bore 

" Dead Sea fruits that tempt the eye, 
But turn to ashes on the lips."* 

France is poor. She cultivates the poor soils, for want 

* "From 1803 to 1815, twelve campaigns cost us nearly a million of men, 
who died in the field of battle, or in the prisons, or on the roads, or in the hospitals, 
and six thousand millions of francs. * * * 

" Two invasions destroyed or coyisumed, on the soil of old France, fifteen hun- 
dred millions of raiv products, or of manufactures, of houses, of workshops, of 
machines, and of animals, indispensable to agriculture, to manufactures, or to 
commerce. As the price of peace, in the name of the alliance, our country has 
seen herself compelled to pay fifteen hundred additional millions, that she 
might not too soon regain her well being, her splendour, and her power. Be- 
hold, in ta-elve years, nine thousand millions of francs,'" (seventeen hundred 
millions of dollars,) "■taken fi-om the productive industi-y of France and lost for 
ever. We found ourselves thus dispossessed of all our conquests, and with 
two hundred thousand strangers encamped on our territory, where they lived, 
at the expense of our glory and of our fortune, until the end of the year 
1818.''— Bupin. 

The results of this course of operation are found in the following statement 
by an eminent French engineer : — " I have frequently traversed in different de- 
partments, twenty square leagues, without meeting with a canal, a road, a facto- 
ry, or even an inhabited estate. The country seemed a place of exile abandoned 
to the miserable, whose interests and whose wants are equally misunderstood, 
and whose distress is constantly increasing, because of the low prices of their 
products, and the cost of transportation." — ilf. Cordier. 

" The conditions of the poorer farmers, daily labourers, and beggars, are so 
near akin, that the passage from one state to another is very frequent. Men- 
dicity is not deemed disgraceful in Brittany. Farmers allow their children to 
beg along the roads. On saints' days, especially the festivals of celebrated 
saints, the aged, infirm, and children of poor farmers, and labourers, turn out. 
Some small hamlets are even totally abandoned by their inhabitants for two 
or three days. All attend the festival to beg. * * The principal cause of 
misery is inebriety ; its frequency among the lower orders keeps them in po- 
verty. The cabaret, (wine and brandy shop,) absorbs a greater part of their 
earnings." — Report to the Commissioners on the Poor Laws. 



WEALTH. 107 

of machinery to enable her to reach the better. For a po- 
pulation of thirty-five millions, she raises five hundred and 
twenty millions of bushels of wheat, rye, barley, oats, Indian 
corn and buckwheat, and about half that quantity of pota- 
toes. Her wheat lands vary from five to twenty bushels per 
acre, the average being about ten. Her cattle are few and 
poor : as are her sheep. Her manure diminishes, and her 
seed increases. Her horses, her food and her fuel, to a vast 
extent, she imports : and pays for them in the produce of 
looms that yield but little, because of the universal poverty 
that forbids improvement of machinery, or combination of ac- 
tion. Her production of solid food, divided among the whole 
people, gives the equivalent of three hundred and forty-three 
pounds of bread, and thirty pounds of meat, per annum, to 
each individual ; while of wine, beer, cider, perry and bran- 
dy, the amount is one hundred and sixty pounds per annum, 
or nearly half as much. The labour that water-drinkers 
would employ in producing corn, is in France given to pro- 
ducing wine and other liquors ; of which the consumption 
averages twenty gallons per annum, for every man, woman, 
and child in the kingdom. Of what is the actual distribution 
of food an idea may be formed from the fact that the ave- 
rage income of more than two-thirds of the population is 
but six cents per day, yielding twenty-four cents for the 
support of a man, his wife and two children : and that 
in a country in which the average price of w^heat, from 
1816 to 1835, was about $1.20 per bushel, and where the 
profits of the retailer, and the cost of transportation are large ; 
so that ten pounds of wheat may be taken as the value of the 
earnings of the whole family. Under such circumstances it 
is not matter of surprise that ignorance of true economy 
should so far exist as to render it exceedingly difficult to in- 
troduce improvements in the machinery of exchange at 
home, as has been shown in the case of the ingenious Jac- 
quard, w^hose life was unsafe because he invented a ma- 



1 08 WEALTH. 

chine of greater power than those already in use. The tur- 
bulence of French workmen is in the direct ratio of their po- 
verty, and that is exceeding great. France now proposes to 
transport a portion of her people to Algeria, that they may 
there raise food to be paid for in the products of the ever- 
wretched artisans of Lyons and Sedan, who are surrounded 
by fertile soils that would yield largely, and require no troops 
to protect their labourers. The effort of that country, from 
the days of Clovis to the present time, has been to increase 
the quantity of her machinery of exchange, and to prevent 
any improvement in its quality : thereby precluding any in- 
crease in the quantity of labour that might be applied to the 
development of the powers of the great food-producing ma- 
chine. Population doubles in about a hundred and twenty 
years, and wealth scarcely more rapidly. Those who labour 
are but little removed from starvation, and those who do not, 
divide among themselves the great mass of the products. 
The government takes thirty per cent, of the product of land 
for taxes on the land itself, and on the registration of deeds, 
mortgages, &c. Interest on the innumerable mortgages with 
which the country is almost literally covered, absorbs nearly 
forty per cent., leaving thirty per cent, to be divided between 
the producer and the lawyers, who now, as in all past times, 
are numerous beyond imagination, and live on the endless 
litigation to which poverty gives rise. Vast machinery and 
small production is everywhere the characteristic of France, 
and has been so from the days of Charlemagne. Under 
such circumstances, the exceeding poverty of the people is 
not matter of surprise ; nor is it extraordinary that wealth and 
population cannot, and do not, increase. At all periods of 
her history, her ^people have shown themselves well disposed 
to honest industry, and Jacques Bonhomme has, at times, 
manifested the possession of all the qualities required in a 
good citizen : but labour, or the care of labourers, was not 
the business of gentlemen, i. e. of people who carried arms, 



WEALTH. 109 

and who generally owed their place in the world to the fact 
that their fathers, or grandfathers, had profited largely by the 
cultivation of the rich soils afforded by the plunder of the 
cities of Italy or the Netherlands : or who like La Hire, Sain- 
trailles, Dammartin, and Dunois, << the young and brave," had 
distinguished themselves as ecorcheurs, i. e. flayers, of the un- 
happy class at home engaged in preparing the great machine 
required for the production of food. It was their especial 
privilege to seek plunder and glory, and to collect taxes for the 
payment of their assistants in the work : and the payment of 
those taxes exhausted, as it now still exhausts, the power of 
the country ; and meadows are abandoned, while men culti- 
vate thin soils which yield five bushels to the acre, or about 
three times the seed. 

The insular position of England gave her security from in- 
vasion. Security tended largely to promote the growth of 
wealth and freedom, and comparative freedom tended to fa- 
cilitate the further growth of wealth. That wealth, however, 
was not permitted to be applied to the improvement of the 
great food-producing machine. The Church had an interest, 
amounting to one-tenth, in all its products, increase as they 
might ; and the owner of the land was unwilling to invest 
his means in improving property liable to such a tax, while 
the labourer felt little disposed to exert himself when so large 
a portion of his products was not to be subject to his own 
disposition. The owner of the remaining nine-tenths was 
rarely a free agent. In some cases, his property was en- 
tailed, and if he began to cut the timber, his son regarded 
the act as waste, and an injunction followed. If his lands 
required drainage, he could not pledge the income beyond his 
life, and it remained undrained. When not entailed, it was 
burthened with endless settlements, dowers, remainders, life- 
interests, &c., while lawyers surrounded it with forms so end- 
less that a conveyance was one of the most serious affairs 
of life. The law of succession gave the whole to the eldest 

10 



110 WEALTH. 

son, who was thus made sufficiently rich to desire to do no- 
thing, while his brothers and sisters were rendered too poor 
to be able to do any thing for themselves, and were gene- 
rally thrown on the bounty of the state. Wealth grew ra- 
pidly, for internal peace prevailed, but it could not go on the 
land, and it had to seek an outlet. It sought manufactures 
and commerce, there to obtain, by aid of expensive machi- 
nery, temporary in its duration, a less reward than could 
have been obtained at home while making the great ma- 
chine. The consequence was that capital, and ships, and 
manufactures, and gentlemen, and labourers, were all super- 
abundant, and food alone was scarce. To find a market for 
manufactures, employment for ships, and poor gentlemen, 
and labourers, colonies were needed : and then, in order that 
they might use as much as possible of the machinery of ex- 
change, it became necessary to compel them to send their 
raw materials to England ; and they were prohibited from 
making even hob-nails, or from effecting exchanges among 
themselves, except through the medium of English ports and 
English merchants. Other powers were equally desirous to 
preserve the power of taxing their colonies, but England 
deemed it right to resist in others what she practised herself, 
and her colonists were encouraged to engage in the trade of 
smuggling the products of the machinery which England was 
thus determined to use. Smuggling led to wars, and wars 
gave occasion to freebooters like Drake and Hawkins, to im- 
mortalize themselves by plundering and burning towns and 
murdering their inhabitants. Wars were expensive, and in- 
volved a necessity for heavy taxes, but colonies were to be 
maintained in order that employment might be had for the 
looms and ships of England ; and taxes gave support to the sons 
of gentlemen who would not permit their shares of the great 
machine to be improved. Navigation laws drove the ships 
of other nations from the ocean, while " Rules of '56," and 
other rules, and later, " Orders in Council " drove them from 



WEALTH. Ill 

the sea in time of war. "Ships, colonies, and commerce" 
were the great wants of England. For these, she has involved 
herself in endless wars. For these, she has committed enor- 
mous crimes : and all because she has pertinaciously insisted 
upon using the inferior in preference to the superior machi- 
nery of production. For these, she has sent embassies at enor- 
mous cost to distant nations, and has maintained the most 
expensive fleets and armies : her sole object being the sale of 
cloth, and knives, and china ware.* England was to be made 
the workshop of the world at any cost. France marched with 
the sword alone. England with the sword in one hand and 
a piece of cloth in the other. Manufactures were too cheap 
at home, and food too dear. Manufacturers wanted cheap 
food, and the landlord gave them corn laws to enable him to 
waste his capital and still get rents : but he gave them also 
ships and men to enable them to prevent the world abroad 
from placing the consumer by the producer, and to compel 
them to do that which he himself would not do, i. e. in- 
crease the supply of the raw produce of the earth : to be 
transported in British ships, wrought in British looms, and 
re-transported in British ships to the place of consumption. 

The necessary consequence of such a course of action has 
been an unceasing disturbance of the movements of all other 
countries. Labour was not permitted, in England, to seek 
employment on the great machine of production, and it was 
superabundant and cheap. Capital, in like manner, was 
denied employment, and it too was cheap. Both these were 
then placed under the control of ship-owners and manufac- 
turers, to enable them to force upon other nations cloths pro- 
duced by women and children who had little food, and very 

* " The history of the colonies for many years is that of a series of loss, 
and of the destruction of capital ; and if to the many millions of private ca- 
pital which have been thus wasted, were added some hundred millions that 
have been raised by British taxes, and spent on account of the colonies, the 
total loss to the British public of wealth which the colonies have occasioned, 
would appear to be quite enormous." — Parnell. 



112 WEALTH. 

little to spare for clothing ;* many of whom went in rags, 
and some absolutely naked,f that other nations might have 
clothing cheap. 

In the natural course of things, the fashioner, whether of 
wood or of wool, takes his place by the side of the producer 
of the food he is to consume, because the transportation of 
food requires the use of a quantity of the machinery of ex- 
change so far exceeding that required for the transportation 
of all other commodities required by the labourer. The 
policy of England was opposed to this course of action. She 
had forced herself into the position of being the great fash- 
ioner of the world, and there she was disposed to remain. 
It was, however, an artificial state of things, and, as is always 
the case where capital and labour are denied permission to 
take their natural course, it was liable to perpetual change. 
The thirst for colonies produced wars, and then her armies 
consumed foreign food, paid for with manufactures. Peace 
came, and she wanted no food. The other parties then could 
take no cloths or knives, and her artisans perished by thou- 
sands. Sometimes cloths and knives were dear, because she 
had found employment for her people and her wealth in war, 
or perhaps in founding new colonies. Other nations then 
attempted to place the consumer by the producer. Peace 
made capital and labour, cloths and knives, cheap, and 
manufacturers elsewhere were ruined. Prices rose again. 
Another effort was made. Prices fell, and again were they 
ruined. 

* By reference to the report of the Assistant Commissioner charged with 
the inquiry into the condition of women and children employed in agricul- 
ture, it will be seen that a change of clothes seems to be out of the question. 
The upper parts of the under-clothes of women at work, even their stays, 
quickly become wet with perspiration, while the lower parts cannot escape 
getting equally wet in nearly every kind of work in which they are employed, 
except in the driest weather. It not unfrequently happens that a woman, on 
returning from work, is obliged to go to bed for an hour or two to allow her 
clothes to be dried. It is also by no means uncommon for her, if she does 
not do this, to put them on again the next morning nearly as wet as when 
she took them off. 

■{■ See Parliamentary Report on the Coal Mines of Great Britain. 



WEALTH. 113 

In India, she killed the cotton manufacturer. The Hindoo 
then exported cotton. In America, she drove the people to 
the west to raise food, when they would have preferred to 
remain at home and consume food, while making cloth. 
Food was rendered so cheap that the planter abandoned 
food and went to cotton. Cotton was rendered so cheap that 
the Hindoo w^as ruined. The Hindoo, deprived of his two 
great trades, turned his attention to opium. The Chinese 
government did not like the trade, and tried to put it down. 
England made war, destroyed a few^ thousand lives, and 
many, very many, millions of property, and thus established 
the right of her subjects to furnish to the Chinese the means 
of intoxication. The planters of the south, driven from food 
to cotton, first ruined the Hindoo, and then were nearly 
ruined themselves. They now raise food, and make ploughs 
and other machines required in agriculture, and some of them 
convert their own cotton into cloth. They are placing the 
consumer by the producer, and the consequence is, that they 
are better paid for the cotton they have to sell, having 
greatly diminished their machinery of exchange, while 
rendering it more efficient. England now threatens them 
with the Hindoo as a rival producer of their great staple. 
Such is the character of the whole system. It is one of 
endless interference, and it has tended to produce elsew^here 
other interferences with trade, having for their great object 
security against its effects. Tariffs of protection are uni- 
versal ; and with every new one has arisen in that country 
a desire for new colonies, to be governed by laws made at 
home, by virtue of which she may compel her subjects to 
use the machinery of exchange she thus insists upon pro- 
viding for the use of the world. She employs her people in 
cultivating poor soils in Canada, South Africa, Austraha and 
New Zealand, while the richest soils of Britain are yet un- 
drained : and thus obtains, by aid of the most expensive ma- 
chinery of exchange, commodities that could be produced 
at home with half the labour. 



114 WEALTH. 

The eyes of England have always been turned froiii 
home. She must and would have ships, colonies, and com- 
merce. To that desire is due the waste of thousands of 
millions : of more than would have sufficed to cover the 
island with railroads ; to render every field a garden ; to 
provide food in abundance for a population five times greater 
than now finds subsistence on her soil, and composed of a 
healthy, hardy race, capable of guarding their own rights, 
and regulating for themselves the hours of labour, the drain- 
age of houses, the mode and expense of interments, and a 
thousand other things, in reference to w^hich they are now 
compelled to claim parliamentary interference: by which is 
indicated an extreme inability to protect themselves. 

The state of things that has existed during the last thirty 
years is the strongest commentary on the system. It is im- 
possible to look at any work on British agriculture without 
being struck with its backward state in most parts of the 
kingdom, when compared with what might naturally have 
been looked for in a country so abounding in wealth and 
population. The cry is everywhere that the people are 
too numerous ; yet the best lands in many of the counties 
are badly cultivated, although wealth so much abounds that 
it has been made a matter of question whether it might not 
be too abundant for the prosperity of a nation !* So abound- 
ing, it has, however, been almost as often the question 
where to get it, as how to be rid of it. For the first few 
years that followed the Congress of Vienna, it was lent to all 
the arbitrary sovereigns of Europe. In 1825, it was sent 
throughout Spanish America. In 1835, it was sent to all 
North America. Between each of these, however, was a 
period of extreme distress to manufacturers and ship-owners ; 
of starvation to operatives, and of ruin to tenants ; and such 
would continue to be the case were the system to be con- 
tinued. None was ever devised so well calculated to retard, 

* Wakefield's Notes to Smith's Wealth of Nations. 



WEALTH. 115 

without the aid of war, the progress of a nation. It has suc- 
ceeded in rendering men and wealth superabundant in a na- 
tion that imports food, which yet can, even now, produce it 
at less cost of labour than any other of the world, America not 
excepted; and it has also succeeded in causing the waste of 
hundreds of millions in loans, mines, colonies, &c., of which 
but a small part will ever return. 

A change has come over the system, and England is now 
making a market at home for labour and capital. She is 
at present fairly engaged in building up the great food-pro- 
ducing machine, and preparing to bring the supply of the 
necessaries of life up to a level with the demands for con- 
sumption. She is substituting the permanent for the tempo- 
rary; and, with each step of her progress in this direction, 
capital and labour are becoming more valuable. A century 
since consols were at 107. They are now at 80, after having 
been, quite recently, by one of the disturbances to which we 
have referred, forced up to par. England is the richest na- 
tion of Europe ; and she owes that distinction to the fact that 
she has enjoyed peace at home, although she has grievously 
disturbed the peace of others abroad. She has, on many 
occasions, failed, totally, to respect in others the rights she de- 
sired others to respect in herself. To these failures is due the 
anomalous position in which she stands. With fertile lands 
and immense wealth, her soil is covered with alms-houses. 
A continuance of the system which is now in course of being 
pursued, will lead, if even the experience of the last few 
years has not already led, to the conclusion, that the judicious 
employment of labour and capital begets a market for both. 
The railroads that have been made have caused the absorp- 
tion of a vast amount of both in agricultural improvement, 
which, in its turn, produces a demand for new roads, and 
they produce a demand for labour. Wages rise, and houses 
are wanted, and coal, and lime, and marl, and clothing ; and 
the demand for labour and capital again increases ; and thus 
on and on, each producing, and produced by, the oth?r, 



116 WEALTH. 

with a constantly augmenting wealth, and constant improve- 
ment of condition.* 

For more than two hundred years from the landing of the 
Pilgrims, the people of the United States never struck a 
blow, except in defence of their rights. f Their movement 
westward was of the most gradual kind ; and although occa- 
sional difficulties have arisen with the aborigines, the change 
of occupants has, uniformly, been effected with less trouble, 
and less effusion of blood, than has been witnessed in any 
other portion of the world except, perhaps, Australia, where 
the wretched inhabitants were too miserable to think of re- 
sistance. During the whole period, we may trace the natu- 
ral effort to place the consumer by the side of the producer, 
and thus to diminish the loss resulting from the use of costly 
machinery of exchange ; and during the whole we see the 
effort counteracted by the false direction given to the capital 
and labour of England. Laws were passed prohibiting va- 
rious species of manufactures in the colonies, while others 
forbade their trading with each other, and thus North Caro- 
lina and Massachusetts were forced to exchange their pro- 
ducts through the medium of the ports of England. Twenty- 
two years of European war produced a great demand foi 
food, and tended to the dispersion of the people for raising it 
to supply the wants of people who thus preferred the use of 
swords to that of ploughs. Years of disturbed relations with 
England tended to produce concentration, and labour and 
capital were applied to fashioning the produce which other- 
wise might have been exported in its rude state. Robbery 
and oppression on the high seas forced them to this effort to 
place the consumer by the side of the producer. Peace 
came, and the whole wealth of England was turned to manu- 
factures, while armies ceased to waste food. The farmers 

* Such would be the effect of this operation, gently and quietly pursued; bul 
whit are to be the momentary effects of a railroad mania, producing eiforts to 
do in three years what should be done in ten, remains yet to be seen. 

+ We should be glad if we could say the same of the past two years. 



WEALTH. 117 

and manufacturers of the United States were both ruined, 
and hence arose the first demand for protection by means of 
a tariff. A few years passed by, and then the years of <' pros- 
perity," so loudly vaunted by the Premier as permanent, were 
followed by the universal ruin of 1826, in which were swept 
away a new set of manufacturers engaged in finding a market 
at home for the supplies of food no longer needed abroad. 
The consequence was the tariff of 1828, which was followed 
by the act known by the name of the Compromise (1832); 
and it would be difficult to find in history an instance of more 
equitable and quiet adjustment of a difficult question. From 
the time of its passage until the year 1836, however, capital 
was steadily accumulating in England, and seeking a vent 
abroad, as railroads then were scarcely permitted at home. 
Much of it came to the United States, in the form of iron and 
cloth, to be applied to the making of roads, or of clothing for 
the people employed in making them. The roads half-made, 
the collapse came, and all again was ruin. The Compromise 
was killed, and the tariff of 1842 took its place. That of 
1846 has succeeded it ; and now we have another collapse. 
English factories are closed, and artisans are discharged, 
and thousands of houses are vacated because of the impos- 
sibility of paying rent. Railroads still go on, and furnaces 
are still employed, but panic is the order of the day, and all 
may stop : and then the iron-makers of America will be ruined. 
It is scarcely possible to study this brief history without 
seeing that the interferences which have existed have been the 
result of a natural effort at self-preservation. In the regular 
course of human affairs, the man who makes the shoes eats 
the food produced by the man who desires to wear them ; and 
he does so because it is easier for him to bring the awl and 
the lapstone, by aid of which he may make ten thousand 
pairs of shoes, than it is for the farmer to carry to him the 
food necessary for his support while doing it. This ten- 
dency struggles incessantly to develope itself, and is seen 
on every occasion making its appearance, but it has almost 



118 WEALTH. 

invariably been crushed ; the effect of which has been that 
the people of the United States are now far more widely 
scattered, and far less wealthy, than they would otherwise 
have been. They have been compelled to use a vast 
quantity of inferior machinery of exchange, in the form of 
roads and wagons, in place of the superior machinery of 
steam-engines and mills : and they have been driven to 
begin on poor soils in the West, yielding ten bushels of wheat 
to the acre, when otherwise they might have worked their 
way down into the rich soils of the river bottoms farther 
east ; portions of which may at all times be bought for far 
less than the cost of production. Pennsylvania abounds in 
bottom-land that will be cultivated when the farmer can find 
a market at his door for milk and cream, and butter ; but in 
the mean time her citizens go west to seek other lands that 
may produce something that will bear carriage to the distant 
markets of the world. It is now obvious what has been the 
cause of this, the single case in which the policy of the 
Union has appeared to depart from the direction of perfect 
freedom of trade. We have always deemed such interfer- 
ences erroneous, but are now well satisfied that the error 
has been with us. 

Man must everywhere commence with the poor soils, and 
the richer ones cannot be cultivated until the consumer and 
the producer are brought together. Whatever foreign inter- 
ference tends to prevent this union, tends to compel men to 
scatter themselves over poor soils, to prevent increase in the 
reward to labour, and to prevent advance in civilization : 
and resistance to such interference is a necessary act of 
self-defence. The article of chief consumption is food, of 
which rich soils would yield larger quantities in return to 
half the labour required on the poor ones ; and half the dif- 
ference would convert into cloth all the cotton and wool pro- 
duced, and make the iron used, in the Union. Such being the 
case, the exports required to pay for English labour are so 
much absolute loss, while the great machine itself suffers in 



WEALTH. 119 

the loss of labour that would double it in product and in 
value. It has been an effort of the people to diminish their 
necessities, and to increase their power over their own actions. 
The case is not unlike one that has recently occurred, 
in which the people of a neighbourhood themselves did 
what the whole people have partially done in the other. 
The steamboat fare in a particular case was deemed too 
high. Opposition boats, at half price, were repeatedly at- 
tempted, and as repeatedly run off by reducing the fare so 
low that opposition could not live. Another was attempted, 
and the price of the old boat was reduced to one-fourth ; 
but the farmers, wiser grown, taxed themselves the additional 
quarter and refused to leave the new boat, and after two 
years of ineffectual contest, the price was fixed permanently 
at half the original price. The resistance offered by the 
American tariff* tended greatly to produce, if, indeed, it was 
not the absolute cause of the abolition of the corn laws ; 
and that measure was precisely the one needed for giving 
the right direction to the capital of England. She will now 
become more extensively agricultural, and the United States 
may, at some future time, be enabled to concentrate their 
population upon the rich soils, instead of scattering so widely 
as they have heretofore done : and as, by degrees, these two 
effects shall be produced, the necessity for protection will 
disappear. 

If the view we have thus offered be correct, as we believe 
it to be, it will be obvious that the people of the United 
States have done in commerce as they have elsewhere done, 
and that they have engaged in no war of any description 
whatsoever, except for self-defence. The consequence of 
this is, the great fact that the poor and scattered colonists 
of sixty years since now constitute the wealthiest nation in 
the world. They have accumulated, within a very brief 
period, a larger property than is possessed even by the 
United Kingdom, the wealthiest community of the eastern 
hemisphere. They make a larger dividend on a larger 



1.20 WEALTH. 

capital, and that dividend is made among twenty-one mil- 
lions ; whereas, that of the other is the portion of twenty- 
eight millions. The consequence is, that they are better fed, 
better clothed, better lodged, better warmed, and better 
taught, than any other community. Such is the result of 
peace abroad, combined with abstinence from interference at 
home. That such should be the case, is the great triumph 
of freedom of trade. They have had no excise officers, or 
tax gatherers, to interfere with the exchanges of property 
within, while the interferences with exchanges abroad ap- 
pear to have been even less than were absolutely necessary 
for self-protection. Indeed, so strong is the tendency to ab- 
stinence from interference, that it has always been to us a 
matter of surprise that there should ever have been found 
a majority of the people to sanction any ; yet it now appears 
that it was the result of an instinctive consciousness of what 
was indispensable for the improvement of their condition : 
and that that instinct was a safer guide than the theories of 
those would have directed them. 

To many, the correctness of this assertion of the superior 
wealth of the Union may appear doubtful, but a little exami- 
nation will satisfy them of its truth. That of Great Britain 
appears greater, because more centralized. The government 
can borrow money more readily ; but that it can do so is only 
evidence that capital is not invested as fast as it is produced : 
that it stagnates : which it never does except where there is 
some error in the system. At no period during the last sixty 
years was she so poor as in 1813 ; yet at none did the 
government make larger loans, or more readily. In the his- 
tory of France, we are constantly struck with the facility of 
obtaining loans, while the country appears to be in a state 
of universal misery and wretchedness. That misery was the 
result of enormous taxation, by which the few were enriched, 
and they were always ready to lend to the party by whose aid 
tlieir taxes were collected. The people were too poor and 
miserable, and property was too insecure, to permit the exist- 



WEALTH. 121 

ence of a demand for capital ; and therefore it was that the 
government could borrow at five per cent, at a time when 
failure in the payment of interest was a matter of frequent 
occurrence. Such, likewise, was the case in Florence, in 
time of distress. The government could always borrow, and 
most readily when wars had rendered property so insecure 
that trade was almost at an end. The little states of Ger- 
many now borrow at four and a half per cent, from bankers 
and others who are enriched at the expense of the labourer 
and taxpayer; but this is an evidence of poverty, and not of 
wealth. Of a thousand, or ten thousand men: or even hun- 
dreds of thousands: each occupying a farm of fifty acres, 
scarcely one will have, at any time, a thousand dollars to 
lend, because each appropriates his profits as fast as earned 
to the improvement of his farm : to bringing the better soils 
into operation. Had they a landlord, they would be steadily 
engaged in laying up that which they would otherwise thus 
promptly have invested, and on rent-day the proprietor might 
have $20,000 or $50,000 to lend to government : but the fer- 
tile soils would remain inactive unless he chose to make them 
active, and he might not choose it. Had they a debt of hun- 
dreds of millions, quarter-day would see accumulated the large 
sums required for the dividends, and it would then rest with 
the public creditors to determine upon the mode of investment, 
and governments would borrow without diflSculty; whereas, 
had no such debt existed, each workman, each labourer, each 
farmer, and each manufacturer, would have invested for 
his own advantage, as fast as it was made, the amount 
that otherwise he would have contributed to this fund. In 
Great Britain both these causes of disturbance may be found, 
and hence she appears richer thanshe is; while in the United 
States neither exists, and hence they are richer than they 
appear; and the rapidity of increase where every man invests 
on the instant, and on his own property, his otherwise spare 
labour, or surplus proceeds of labour, is so prodigious as to 
defy calculation. They are now the wealthiest nation in the 

11 



122 WEALTH. 

world : and their annual accumulations are at least double 
those of Great Britain and Ireland, although their average 
expenditure is greater. They spend more, and yet econo- 
mize a greater 'proportion of their earnings than any people 
in the world. 

The man who employs his children in robbing his neigh- 
bours' barns and hen-roosts, and lets his farm remain un- 
tilled : will continue poor. The soil he cultivates is appa- 
rently rich, but really barren. Such has been the course of 
France. The man who builds a mill in which to grind his 
neighbours' grain, and sends a portion of his children to 
cultivate distant lands, while employing others of them in 
building wagons and in hauling home their grain, wMe his own 
farm remains untilled, will continue poor. He loses labour 
and manure. The man who does these things, and half-cul- 
tivates a large farm, the profits of which make some amends 
for losses elsewhere, may grow rich slowly. He loses much 
labour and manure. Such has been the course of England. 

The farmer who minds his own business, and thus attracts 
around him the miller, the tanner, the shoemaker, the black- 
smith, the carpenter, the wheelwright, the hatter, the spin- 
ner, the weaver, and the paper-maker, performs all his ex- 
changes w4th the most perfect and the least costly machinery 
of exchange ; and has almost all his labour and manure to 
put upon his farm, which yields him daily increased returns 
to that labour, and increases daily in value. He becomes 
rich. Such has been, so far as it was possible, the course of 
the United States ; and hence their greater wealth. 



Such being the case, it may be asked how it happens that 
several of the States of the Union have been involved in so 
much difficulty in regard to the payment of interest on the mo- 
ney borrowed for the construction of roads and canals ? The 
cause is, we think, easily explained. The tendency of the 
English system has been that of forcing manufactures and 



WEALTH. 123 

trade, the consequence of which has been that all other na- 
tions have experienced a difficulty in concentrating their 
population sufficiently to enable them to cultivate the rich 
soils ; and this in the precise ratio of their intercourse with 
her. The people of the United States have felt this in the 
highest degree. They have been forced to scatter themselves 
over the west, that they might raise food to send abroad to 
pay for clothing ; and what they needed was machinery of 
exchange in the form of roads. Those who did thus scatter 
were poor, for they cultivated soils that yielded small returns; 
although surrounded by fertile soils covered with timber that 
they could not yet remove, or by swamps that they were un- 
able yet to drain. 

Pennsylvania still to a vast extent cultivated poor soils, 
while timber abounded in her river-bottoms : and she still was 
obliged to depend upon her woods for fuel and fencing, 
while her lands abounded in iron and coal. She had tried 
to convert her ore into iron, but had suffered heavily by un- 
ceasing fluctuations resulting from the unnatural state of 
things in England. She had tried manufactures : every 
thing, in short, tending to bring the fashioner to the side 
of the producer, and thus diminish the cost of the ma- 
chinery of exchange. Her people were leaving the coal 
and the ore, to travel west in quest of other lands on which 
to raise more of the already superabundant food. To get 
this food to market, or to render the vast deposits of coal and 
ore productive, roads and canals were needed : and this was 
the great want of the whole country from the Hudson to the 
Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi, because the policy of 
England limited them to these as their only machinery of 
exchange. In this state of things, commenced in that coun- 
try one of her periodical overflows of capital. It had been 
most abundant in 1825, and all the world had been ruined 
in 1826 by the excessive scarcity consequent upon its waste 
in the mines of Mexico and elsew^here. It overflowed again 
in 1831, and the change of that year ruined many, and 



124 WEALTH. 

rendered very many others indisposed to encounter the risks 
of trade. In 1833, it commenced again to overflow, the 
reason for which was to be found in the fact that the Legisla- 
ture pertinaciously refused to permit its investment at home. 
The Liverpool and Manchester Railroad had succeeded, and 
there was a strong disposition to make other roads; but 
peers did not approve of locomotives running near their 
mansions, and charters could not be obtained. Various appli- 
cations, therefore, were rejected, after great expenditure by 
the applicants. One of these that we now recollect, the 
Rugby, spent <£160,000, or $800,000, in the mere effort to 
obtain an act of incorporation, and failed. As it could 
not be permitted to remain at home, capital sought a market 
abroad, among the people of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Indi- 
ana, and other States south and west, who desired to obtain 
for themselves better machinery of exchange in the form of 
roads, railroads, and canals. They had the food, and it 
could be eaten on the ground ; and England was ready to 
supply the iron for the roads, and the clothing for those who 
were to be employed in making them. To work they all 
went ; but before the roads or canals were so far completed 
as to be productive, the usual crash came. Capital became 
so scarce in England that the Bank was on the eve of stop- 
page ; and traders and manufacturers were ruined by thou- 
sands. She now wanted to be paid ; but trade was ruined. 
The downfall there had filled the markets of the world with 
cloths and iron, and the manufacturers and iron-masters of 
the Union were ruined by events over which they had no 
control, and against which they could not have guarded. 
Mechanics and workmen of all descriptions were discharged, 
and thousands were compelled to seek employment in agri- 
culture : and this at the moment when the market for agri- 
cultural products was so over-stocked that wheat scarcely 
paid the freight to the Atlantic cities, and corn w^as almost 
valueless. The half-made roads and canals produced nothing, 
and the farmers of the States by which they were made, 



WEALTH. 125 

could command no money with which to pay taxes by aid 
of which to meet the interest. Coal ceased to be mined, 
and th^e canals upon which it had been carried ceased to re- 
ceive tolls ; while those who had invested their fortunes in 
opening mines were ruined. England had destroyed the 
market for corn at home, and she would receive none : not even 
to feed her starving workmen. The interest ceased to be 
paid, and then arose one universal yell throughout all Eng- 
land at the dishonesty of America : of that America whom 
she had temporarily ruined. Time, however, rolled around, 
and when corn could again be sold, all gladly co-operated in 
the effort to place the several States in a position to perform 
their contracts. At the first moment when such a thing was 
possible, Pennsylvania, by a unanimous vote of legislators 
elected hy the votes of every man in the State, determined 
that payment should be resumed, and it was done : and now 
she is reducing the principal of the debt. Maryland has fol- 
lowed : and Illinois and Indiana, both of which were occupied 
at the time by a very scattered population, are now preparing 
to follow in her footsteps. A little while hence, and all will 
have done so, and none will feel so much satisfaction as 
those who pay the taxes. 

Many who have united in the abuse of Pennsylvania and 
of other States, and of Americans generally, were, doubtless, 
ignorant of the cause of difficulty ; and unaware that it was to 
the perpetual error of English policy, and the perpetual dis- 
turbance of which it was the cause, that the defalcation on 
that occasion was due : as well as the losses that on other 
occasions had fallen on their countrymen. It may safely be 
asserted that five-sixths of all the failures of the Union in the 
last half century may be traced to these causes. In that period 
we have seen the revulsions of 1815, 1819, 1825, 1831, 1836, 
1839, and 1847, and against such changes no one could 
guard. Merchants and manufacturers found the markets 
filled with commodities from abroad, by which their business 
was destroyed : farmers and miners found their customers 

11* 



126 WEALTH. 

ruined : and perpetual failure was the result. In all countries 
in which peace has prevailed, wealth has grown ; and where 
such has been the case, the people have always been honest : 
and to this America is no exception. On the contrary, we 
think it safe to say that it is the only country in the world in 
which the w^hole body of the people, from the highest to the 
lowest: all tax payers : could have been found uniting in a de- 
termination that the debts of the State should be paid. Were 
such a question submitted to the whole people of England or 
of France, the one might do the same, though w^e doubt it : 
but the other assuredly would not. The security for the 
debt of Pennsylvania is among the best in the world ; for 
those who are to pay it have resolved unanimously that it 
shall be paid. 

The gradual diminution of the consciousness of right, 
or power, on the part of those who administer the govern- 
ment towards the people, and the increase in the sense 
of duty towards them,that accompanies the growth of popu- 
lation and the cultivation of the better soils, may be traced 
in England upwards from the closing of the Exchequer 
by Charles II. to the latter years of the last century, when an 
exhausting war was diminishing the growth of both wealth 
and population. From that period, during twenty years, 
the government paid its debts in paper, sometimes worth 
but three-fourths of what the creditor had a right to claim. 
With peace came wealth, and an accelerated growth of popu- 
lation consequent upon the power of obtaining food in greater 
abundance ; and with peace returned the feeling of obliga- 
tion to comply with contracts : and, since 1819, the public 
creditor has received his interest in full, as he must continue 
to do, so long as wealth and population shall increase ; 
and his security will increase with every application of 
labour to the development of the vast resources contained in 
the bowels of the earth beneath him ; for with every such 
application the return to labour will increase, and the neces- 
sity for armies, fleets, and taxes, will decrease. 



WEALTH. - 127 

In France, perpetually engaged in war and in cultivating 
the poorer soils, there has been little sense of duty, and great 
consciousness of power on the part of the government ; and 
hence her history is one of unceasing failure in her duties to 
the public creditor : first in the refusal to pay interest, and 
next in the reduction or repudiation of the debt. The most 
striking case, and only so because the largest in amount, 
was that of the regent Duke of Orleans. A long period of 
comparative peace was accompanied by some increase of 
wealth and population ; and the growing sense of duty was 
exhibited in the proceedings of Necker and Turgot ; but the 
consciousness of power prevailed, and they were dismissed. 
The Revolution followed, with vast waste of treasure and of 
life. The strong men perished in the field, and the old, the 
young, and the feeble, combining their exertions w^ith those 
of the weaker sex, obtained a miserable subsistence from the 
poorer soils. The public creditor disappeared. His rights 
were obliterated, and thus power prevailed over duty. Since 
that period, his rights have been more or less respected ; 
but the continuance of that respect is dependent upon the 
growth of population and of wealth. Some are now converting 
meadows into corn lands, while others are paying the govern- 
ment for the privilege of abandoning altogether their little 
inheritances. Whole departments are unable to produce a 
single horse for sale. Cattle and sheep are becoming poorer. 
Should this process long continue, the sense of power may 
prevail over that of duty, and the public creditor may again 
cease to exist. 

If the reader will now study the history of the public debt of 
Spain, and mark the total failure of the government in the pay- 
ment of interest, at those periods when her people were largely 
engaged in the cultivation of the distant soils of Mexico and 
Peru, Italy and the Netherlands, and neglecting the richer soils 
at their feet : of Austria, for a long series of years : of Denmark 
and of Holland : and, indeed, of every country of the world: 
he will find that public faith has grown with the cultivation of 



128 WEALTH. 

the rich solis, and failure has followed their abandonment: 
and thus may he acquire a standard absolutely infallible for 
testing the value of every pubHc stock. So tested, the stocks 
of the American States present the best security in the world, 
and their values vary among themselves precisely in the 
ratio of the difference between the soils they cultivate. Mas- 
sachusetts goes deepest into her hard soil, while Florida still 
cultivates the light soils, though abounding in river-bottoms 
and swamps that wdll at some future period afford great re- 
turns to labour. New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Mary- 
land, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Mississippi, now occupy 
various places in the scale ; but all are growing in wealth and 
numbers, and all are gradually cultivating better soils, and 
all will soon place themselves side by side with the great 
State, the leader in ximerican civilization.* 



The view which we have thus offered of the superiority of 
the result derived from labour employed in constructing the 
machine for producing food, to that derived from using other 
machines of constantly diminishing power, differs greatly 
from that of the advocates of Mr. Ricardo's system. Thus, 
Mr. McCulloch says: " There are no limits to the bounty of 
nature in manufactures ; but there are limits, and those not 
very remote, to her bounty in agriculture. The greatest 
possible amount of capital might be expended in the con- 
struction of steam-engines, or of any other sort of machinery; 
and after they had been multiplied indefinitely, the last would 
be as powerful and efficient in producing commodities and 
saving labour as the first. Such, however, is not the case 
wiih. the soil. Lands of the first quality are speedily ex- 
hausted ; and it is impossible to apply capital indefinitely 
even to the best soils, without obtaining from it a constantly 
diminishing rate of profit." All this might be true if man did 

* " The civilization of New England has been like a beacon lit upon a hill 
which, after it has diffused its warmth around, tinges the distant horizon with 
its glow." — De TorqneviUc. 



WEALTH. 129 

speedily exhaust the best soils ; but, as he is always going from 
a poor soil to a better, aud then returning on his footsteps to the 
original poor one, and turning up the marl or the lime ; and so 
on, in continued succession : and as he has done so in every na- 
tion of the world where population and wealth have been per- 
mitted to increase : and as, at each step in this course, he is 
makino; a better machine : the converse of Mr. McCulloch's 
proposition may prove to be true. It is held that there are no 
limits to the capital that may be profitably expended in en- 
gines, because all are equal to the first ; but that there are limits 
to that which may be employed in agriculture, because, the 
last is necessarily inferior to the first. If, however, the last 
agricultural machine be always, as it always is, superior to 
the previous ones : then capital may be invested in agricul- 
ture with more advantage than in engines, because the last 
are only of equal, whereas the other is of superior, power. 

A steam-engine j9roc?Mce5 nothing. It diminishes the labour 
required for converting wool into cloth, or grain into flour : for 
freeing mines from water : or for transporting wool, or grain, 
or coal. The gain from its use is the wages of that labour, 
minus the loss by deterioration of the machine. Labour ap- 
plied to fashioning the earth produces wages, plus the gain 
by improvement of the machine. The more an engine can 
be made to yield the worse it will become. The more the 
earth can be made to yield the better will it become. The 
man who neglects his farm to employ himself and his engine 
in the work of fashioning or exchanging the products of other 
farms, obtains wages, minus loss of capital. He who em- 
ploys himself on his own farm obtains wages, plus profits re- 
sulting from the improvement of the farm, to the extent that 
that improvement exceeds the loss from the deterioration of 
the spades, ploughs, engines, or other machinery that is used 

To test the correctness of this view, we submit tw^o cases to 
the consideration of the reader. A. and B. have each a horse 
and cart, and a farm from which they can have three hun- 
dred bushels of wheat : or its equivalent. An offer is made 
to give them each that quantity, but the distance is so 



130 ^fH^fjm WEALTH. 

great that the hauling will occupy precisely the same time 
as the raising would do. A. accepts, and B. does not. A. 
spends his time, and that of his horse and cart, on the road. 
B. stays at home. When it rains, A. stops in the road-side 
tavern. B. spends the same day at home, repairing his house. 
When A.'s horse feeds and rests, his master has nothing to 
do. B. grubs up an old root, or repairs a fence. A.'s horse 
deposits his manure in the road. That of B. goes on his 
farm. A.'s horse hauls every day, and the service performed, 
nothing remains. B. opens a marl pit, and puts on his land 
manure for two or three years. At the end of the year A.'s 
horse and cart are worn out, while B.'s are almost as good 
as new. The farm of A. has deteriorated, while that of B. 
is greatly improved. Both have done the same number of 
days' work, and both have received the same compensation, 
yet A. is poorer and B. richer than at first. Every diminu- 
tion in the quantity required of the machinery of exchange 
tends to increase the quantity of labour, both of body and 
mind, that may be applied directly to production: and such 
labour is rewarded with an increased return, and an increase 
in the powers of the machine itself. Such has been the case 
in all time past, and such will it ever continue to be. 

It is by this almost insensible contribution of labour that 
land acquires value. The first object of the poor cultivator 
of the thin soils is to obtain food and clothing for himself 
and his family. His leisure is given to the work of improve- 
ment. At one place he cuts a little drain, and at another 
he roots out a stump. At one moment he cuts fuel for his 
family, and thus clears his land ; and at another digs a well 
to facilitate the watering of his cattle, and thus keep his 
manure in the stable yard. He knows that the machine will 
feed him better the more perfectly he fashions it, and that 
there is always place for his time and his labour to be ex- 
pended with advantage to himself. 

A piece of land that yields .£100 per annum will sell for 
jBSOOO. a steam engine that will produce the same, will 
scarcely command jBIOOO. Why should this difference 



WEALTH. • 131 

exist ? It is because the buyer of the first knows that it 
will pay him wages and interest, plus the increase of its 
value by use. The buyer of the other knows that it will give 
him wages and interest, minus the diminution in its value by 
use. The one takes three and a third per cent.,^/i^5 the differ- 
ence : the other ten, minus the difference. The one buys a 
machine that improves by use. The other, one that deterio- 
rates with use. The one is buying a machine produced by 
the labour of past times, and to the creation of which has 
been applied all the spare time of a series of generations : 
and he gives for it one-third or one-half of the labour that 
would be now required to produce it in its present state, were 
it reduced to its original one. That of the other is bought 
at the actual price of the labour that it has cost. The one 
is a machine upon which new capital and labour may be 
expended with constantly increasing return ; while upon the 
other no such expenditure can be made. We have now 
before us an account of the operations at Knowsley, where 
an expenditure of <£7, IQs. per acre for draining has been 
rewarded by an increase of 205. in rent, or more than 
thirteen per cent. In another case, where land had been 
abandoned as totally worthless, labour to the amount of 405. 
per acre has been attended with a gain of IO5. per acre 
to the owner, and IO5. to the tenant, making fifty per cent, 
per annum : without taking into consideration the gain to the 
labourer in the increased facility of procuring the necessa- 
ries of life. Lord Stanley, who furnishes this statement, 
says, and we are sure most truly, that although he and his 
father have for several years laid a million of tiles per 
annum, they feel that they had only made a beginning.* We 
believe that they have, even yet, scarcely begun to think upon 
the subject. They are only beginning to waken up. We 
have also before us an account of a field so completely worn 



* Thirty years since, all the tiles laid in the United Kingdom amounted to 
but seventy-one millions per annum. 



132 WEALTH. 

out that it produced, with manure, but five hundred weight 
of turnips, but which, by being treated with sulphuric acid 
and bones, was made to yield two hundred and eighty-five 
hundred weight ; and another, which gave to coal ashes arid 
coal dust but eighty-eight hundred weight, gave to the acid 
and bones, two hundred and fifty-one hundred weight. Such 
profits are not to be found in any other pursuit: and yet 
England has been wasting her energies on ships, colonies, 
and commerce, having at her feet an inexhaustible magazine 
asking only to be worked. 

The improvement above described is remarkable, only be- 
cause concentrated within a short space of time. Had the 
land described by Lord Stanley been cultivated by the owner, 
and had he felt that agriculture was a science worthy of his 
attention ; the drainage would have taken place gradually, 
and the improvement would have been marked by a gradual 
growth in the power to pay better wages and more rent. We 
have before us a notice of land rented for nine hundred 
pounds, at the close of a long lease at one hundred and thirty 
pounds. During all this time, its owner has had interest on 
his capital, and at the close of the lease, his capital has in- 
creased seven times. His investment was better than it 
would have been in steam-engines at ten per cent., because 
his engineer paid him for the privilege of building up his ma- 
chine : whereas, the steam-engineer would have required to 
be paid while wearing the machine out. Everybody is con- 
tent with small interest, and sometimes with no interest, 
from land, where population and wealth are rapidly growing, 
because there capital is steadily augmenting without efibrt. 
The house in which we write has greatly augmented 
in value, while we have had interest in the use of it. In- 
stead of six per cent., we have twenty per cent., and this is 
the experience of all men who own landed property where 
population and wealth are permitted to increase : for they will 
always increase if not prevented by interferences hke those 
which have existed in England, and to a still greater ex- 



WEALTH. 133 

tent in France. The great pursuit of man is agriculture. 
There is none "in which so many of the laws of nature must 
be consulted and understood as in the cultivation of the earth. 
Every change of the season, every change even of the winds, 
every fall of rain, must affect some of the manifold opera- 
tions of the farmer. In the improvement of our various do- 
mestic animals, some of the most abstruse principles of phy- 
siology must be consulted. Is it to be supposed that men 
thus called upon to study, or to observe the laws of nature, 
and labour in conjunction with its powers, require less of the 
light of the highest science than the merchant or the manu- 
facturer ?"* It is not. It is the science that requires the 
greatest knowledge, and the one that pays best for it: and yet 
England has driven man, and wealth, and mind, into the less 
profitable pursuits of fashioning and exchanging the products 
of other lands ; and has expended thousands of millions on 
fleets and armies to enable her to drive with foreign nations 
the poor trade : when her own soil offered her the richer one 
that tends to produce that increase of wealth and concentration 
of population which have in all times and in all ages given 
the self-protective power that requires neither fleets, nor 
armies, nor tax-gatherers. In her efforts to force this trade, 
she has driven the people of the United States to extend 
themselves over vast tracts of inferior land when they might 
'more advantageously have concentrated themselves on rich 
ones : and she has thus delayed the progress of civilization 
abroad and at home. She has made it necessary for the 
people of grain-growing countries to rejoice in the deficien- 
cies of her harvests, as affording them the outlet for surplus 
food that they could not consume, and that was sometimes 
abandoned on the field, as not worth the cost of harvesting; 
instead of being enabled to rejoice in the knowledge that 
others were likely to be fed as abundantly as themselves. Her 
internal system was unsound, and her wealth gave her power 



* Wadsworth's address to the New York Agricultural Society. 

12 



134 



WEALTH. 



to make that unsoundness a cause of disturbance to the 
world : and hence she has appeared to be everywhere re- 
garded as a sort of common enemy. The tendency of her 
navigation laws was greatly to increase the quantity required 
of the machinery of exchange : and the resistance thereto 
was an instinctive effort at self-protection. That resistance 
was led by the United States. American ships were not 
permitted to do what English ships might, and they therefore 
rendered it impossible for English ships to do certain things 
that American ships might do. For a brief time English 
ships came in ballast and went home loaded, and American 
ships went to England in ballast and brought home cargoes : 
and thus two ships were doing the work of one. The result 
was, that all were put upon a footing, and the quantity required 
of the machinery of exchange was so far diminished that 
exchanges were performed with far less labour than before ; 
the consequence of which has been that exchanges have in- 
creased greatly in number, while the loss by friction: or the 
cost of exchanging : has fallen, and the work is better done.* 
It would seem as if the general resistance to English ship- 
ping and manufactures had been the necessary effort for the 
establishment of perfect freedom of trade, and for securing 
to the world at large, eventually, the most perfect efficiency 
of exchange: while reducing the quantity of machinery re- 
quired for the purpose.- England could produce food and 
machinery at less cost of labour than any other country of 
the world, and every step in that direction would have tended 
to render production more and more easy. Other countries 
wanted machinery to enable them to concentrate their popu- 
lation and to consume their food at home. She refused ma- 

* " Various devices were fallen upon to counteract the navigation system 
of the Americans, without in any degree relaxing our own : but they all failed 
of their object ; and at length it became obvious to every one that we had en- 
gaged in an unequal struggle, and that the real effect of our policy ivas to give 
a bounty oti the importation of the manufactured goods of other countries into 
the United States, and thus gradually to exclude our manufactures and our 
shipping from the ports of the republic."— i)fcC?</Zoc/i. 



WEALTH. 135 

chinery, and sent cotton and woollen goods which they would 
have preferred to make ; and she fixed her prices high or 
low, as suited her own convenience : the result of which was, 
that with each successive effort they were ruined. So with 
ships. Sometimes she would furnish them at low prices, and 
at other times they were high. If she was at peace she had 
ships to spare. If at war, they were scarce, and freights 
were high. The whole system of that country, in past times, 
has been marked by a desire to force her own capital and 
labour off in a wrong direction: from the profitable to the un- 
profitable : and every step she is now making exhibits a ten- 
dency in the right one. Wiser grown, she now looks to 
home, and is experiencing, at every turn, the wonderful 
effect of self-cultivation. She is investing vast wealth in 
railroads, but it grows with the expenditure ; for she is now 
building up the great machine to produce food and raw ma- 
terials of every description for which her climate is suited. 
She is expending, as we believe, an equal amount of labour 
in draining and clearing lands ; but her wealth grow^with 
every step in this direction, for the great machine is producing 
the food and the clothing that are used in building it. While 
pursuing agriculture with a spirit heretofore unknown, she is 
furnishing machinery to almost all Europe : a consequence of 
all of which is that her exports of cotton goods are no longer 
what they were. Every steam-engine she sends to the con- 
tinent tends to produce a demand for railroad iron ; and 
every railroad makes demands for engines, and for finer com- 
modities in lieu of the coarser ones she was before accus- 
tomed to export. Every new soil that is improved at home 
tends to produce a demand for engines, and every engine 
tends to increase the power of producing new and better soils. 
The interests of all are ultimately to be promoted by perfect 
freedom of trade, and such has always been the case : but 
the persistence by a nation so wealthy as England in a course 
so adverse to the growth of civilization at home and abroad, 
tended to produce discords calculated to render its establish- 



136 WEALTH. 

ment absolutely impossible, and a long time may yet be re- 
quired for its accomplishment. 

The PAST says to the landlord of the preseJjt : "I have 
erred. I have driven labour and capital from the soil, to be 
wasted on armies, and fleets, and colonies. Your lands are 
far less valuable than they might have been made, and 
your children are forced to seek employment abroad, when 
they might be more prosperous and happy at home. Take 
warning by my example. Avoid war, and preparations for 
war, and your wealth will rapidly increase." 

To the labourer it says: <'I have erred, and you have 
suffered. Food has been high, and wages low. Labour to 
prevent war, and preparations for war. Your wages will 
then increase, and you will acquire power over your own ac- 
tions, and may stay at home." 

To the manufacturer it says: '^I have forced labour and 
capital into trade and manufactures, and the result has been 
universal unsteadiness. Study to promote economy and the 
growth of a home market, which will be more steady and more 
profitable than any foreign ones. The people abroad who eat 
their own food and make their own coarse clothing, will be 
better customers than they are now ; for when you shall have 
ceased to disturb the world, you will see perfect freedom and 
perfect steadiness of trade." 

To all it says: <« Labour to acquire power over the land 
that has been given to you, and with each step the feeling 
of necessity will diminish ; while with each the conscious- 
ness of power over yourselves, your feelings, thoughts, and 
actions, will increase." 



WEALTH AND LAND. 137 



CHAPTER IV. 

WEALTH AND LAND. 

The first cultivator occupies such spots as his small means 
will permit him to use. He has yet acquired no power to 
compel the land to yield him what is needed for his comfort- 
able subsistence. With the acquisition of the spade he turns 
under, and thus expels, the wild grass : substituting for it 
the oats, or the barley, or the rye, as he deems one or the 
other best fitted for his purpose. In the outset he requires 
much land, because but small portions can be made to yield 
to his demands any return whatsoever. With the growth of 
his wealth : with the acquisition of axes and ploughs : other 
portions, however, become productive ; and, by degrees, he 
finds, on a few acres, more continuous employment for his 
time than, in the outset, was found upon a thousand. His 
family, too, has grown. If all continue to cultivate the 
whole quantity, there will be great waste of labour. The 
territory he has occupied covers several square miles; and 
the time required to walk to and from their work will be so 
much deduction from that which should be given to the cul- 
tivation of the soil, or of their own physical and mental powers. 
Each takes his share, and each builds himself a house. Each 
cultivates his own land ; and each calls upon his brothers 
for aid in harvest: or in building a barn: or rolling logs: or 
quarrying stone. All are separate, but all are therefore inte- 
rested in making roads by which all may be enabled to 
unite. While all lived in the same house, their labours were 
w^asted in bringing home the fruits of the field, and they had 
no leisure for making roads. Now that all work separately; 
that each man eats on his own land the rye or the oats needed 

12* 



138 WEALTH AND LAND. 

for his support ; each feels more and more the advantage to 
be derived from increasing the facility of obtaining the aid 
that may be required : and thus the division of* land conse- 
quent upon the increase of wealth in the form of spades and 
axes, tends to produce increase of wealth in the form of roads : 
thus increasing the power of union, while diminishing the 
necessity therefor. Each labours on his own land, and each 
labours faithfully, because labouring for himself. Each makes, 
or procures from elsewhere, some machine calculated to in- 
crease the powers of himself and his neighbour ; and all com- 
bine, at times, to procure those things which, important to 
all, are beyond the means of any. 

If we look to Attica in the days of her prosperity, we see 
a tendency to the division of land, and the union of men. 
If we look to her in the days of her lowest poverty, we see 
Herodes Atticus universal proprietor, and universal builder, 
while union among men has ceased to exist. If we look to 
Rome in the days of Servius, we see a vast body of small 
proprietors enriching themselves by the cultivation of their 
own land. If we look again, we see universal poverty : the 
numerous little and prosperous proprietors being replaced by 
Scipios and Pompeys, owning vast tracts and overwhelmed 
by debts, while disunited men have become slaves. So, 
again, if w^e look to Gaul, or Africa. Everywhere throughout 
the world, the tendency to division of land and combination 
of action among men has grown with the growth of wealth : 
while poverty has produced its concentration in the hands of 
a few proprietors, and disunion among its occupants. We see 
this now exhibited on a large scale in the south of Spain, where 
a few grandees have replaced the honest, industrious, and en- 
lightened Moors, who combined their exertions for bringing 
into activity the best soils of their own land, and for fashioning 
their products: thereby enriching their country and themselves. 

The great business of mankind is the production of food, 
and the raw materials of commodities and things necessary 
to nable man to enjoy the conveniences, comforts, or lux- 



WEALTH AND LAND. 139 

uries of life. That he may do this, the Deity has given him 
the command of a great laboratory, in which exist all the 
elements of production, waiting only the application of the 
physical and mental powers with which he has been en- 
dowed, to render them available for his purpose. The gift 
was accompanied with the command to labour, that he 
might have food for himself and his children : to labour, 
that he might have clothing and shelter : to labour, that he 
might acquire knowledge : to labour, that he might enjoy 
leisure and repose. It is a great workshop, in which com- 
bination of effort yields largely, but can scarcely have ex- 
istence when men cultivate the poor soils. To combination 
division is essential, and where that does not exist, the pro- 
gress of cultivation is always slow. Hence the wretched con- 
dition of all commons, and of all lands upon which exists the 
partial right of common, as on most of those of France, under 
the system of vaine pature. Starting from the point of abso- 
lute barbarism, when all land is held in common, it will be 
found that the cultivation improves with every approach to- 
wards absolute ownership. Thus, it is better now in every 
part of England than in any part in the days when men 
were serfs, and had in land no property whatsoever. It is 
better where short leases exist than where all are tenants 
at will. It is better where long leases exist than where they 
are short, and the highest cultivation is invariably found 
where the owner and occupant are one and the same, and 
where there exists every inducement to the most perfect 
economy of time and labour. Thus it is better in Cumber- 
land, where heads of families are generally proprietors of a 
few acres, than in Wilts or Dorset, where it is held in large 
masses, and cultivated by hired labourers. This may again 
be seen in the high cultivation of the peasant proprietors of 
the valley of the Arno ; in the rich fields and the neat and 
comfortable houses of the small landholders of Belgium ; 
and in the high prosperity of the same class in Norway. 
The division of land, and its cultivation by the owner for his 



140 WEALTH AND LAND. 

own profit, are the necessary consequences of the growth of 
wealth; and with each step in this direction agriculture 
becomes more and more a science, furnishing employment 
for minds of the highest order, and yielding the largest re- 
turns to their exertions. It ceases to be the labour of the 
slave, and becomes the refined and elegant occupation of 
the gentleman, who gives to the direction of a small estate 
all his faculties, and obtains a liberal reward for permitting a 
portion of its proceeds to be applied to its improvement; 
while to those who execute with their hands what he plans 
with his head, large wages are afforded : and he finds in 
this employment greater happiness than was enjoyed by 
those of his predecessors whose thousands of acres were 
scratched by serfs to enable them to pay the ransom to his 
captor on the field of battle. 

Such is the tendency of things when wealth and popula- 
tion grow. War and waste produce a reverse effect, and 
land concentrates itself in fewer hands. Hence it is that the 
age of barbarism, dignified with the title of that of the Feudal 
System, has been seen to inflict upon the world the right of 
primogeniture, another of the weak inventions by which man 
endeavours to set aside the great laws of nature : but over 
which she invariably triumphs when men remain at peace. 
The views of M. de Tocqueville in this respect are widely 
different. He says : 

" When the legislator has once regulated the law of in- 
heritance, he may rest from his labour. The machine once 
put in motion will go on for ages, and advance, as if self- 
guided, to a certain point. When framed in a particular 
manner, this law unites, draws together, and vests property 
in a few hands — its tendency is clearly aristocratic. On 
opposite principles its action is still more rapid : it divides, 
distributes, and disperses both property and power. Alarmed 
by the rapidity of its progress, those who despair of arresting 
its motion, endeavour to obstruct it by difficulties and impe- 
diments : they vainly seek to counteract its effect by con- 



WEALTH AND LAND. 141 

trary efforts : but it gradually reduces or destroys every ob- 
stacle, until by its unceasing activity, the bulwarks of the 
influence of wealth are ground down to the fine and shifting 
sand which is the basis of democracy." 

In no part of Europe has the law of primogeniture been 
more firmly established than in England ; yet in none in 
which it has existed has there been seen a stronger tendency 
to the division of land, as has been shown by the nume- 
rous shifts and contrivances invented to bar entails, and to 
remove other obstacles to the division and sale of landed 
property : the result of which is seen in the fact that she 
possesses now more than 200,000 proprietors. Down to the 
commencement of the recent great war, such was the inva- 
riable tendency ; but during the period of its continuance 
the poverty of the people and consolidation of land returned 
together. The few became greater, and the many smaller ; 
and had the war been continued on the same scale for 
another period of twenty years, that country might have ex- 
hibited to the world princes like those of Esterhazy, wearing 
coats covered with diamonds and surrounded by serfs in rags. 
With the long- continued peace, a different state of things is 
gradually arising. Mechanics are purchasing freeholds, and 
landlords are forming cottage allotments ; a small beginning, 
it is true, but one that shows the tendency of the time. 
Tenants are claiming longer leases, and landlords are begin- 
ning to perceive that short leases and large rents cannot 
exist together. They themselves have already taken a per- 
petual lease, at a fixed rent, from the Church. Tenants are 
now claiming of them the right to be paid for their improve- 
ments, perhaps the first step tow^ards perpetual leases, and 
eventual proprietorship. Each step in this diiection is but 
the preparation for a new one. Railroads raise w^ages. 
Drainage raises wages for labourer and tenant, and both 
acquire the desire to cultivate their own land for their own 
profit. With each such step the proportion of the owner 
decreases, although his quantity of rent increases : and with 



142 WEALTH AND LAND. 

each there is a tendency to a rise in the standard of living, 
and to equality of condition. The ability of the non-labourer to 
hold large tracts of land becomes less when compared with 
the ability of the labourer to buy it : while the inducement 
to the latter to obtain a piece of land that he can cultivate 
after his own fashion, tends daily to increase. The wages of 
skill and knowledge have risen : and the reward of mere wealth 
has failed, and must necessarily fail, to keep pace therewith. 
The great proprietor must work. He now does work, and he 
finds in the enjoyment of occasional leisure that happiness 
which a life of idleness and ennui had failed to afford. It is, we 
think, impossible to look to any part of England without see- 
ing this operation either commenced, or about to commence. 
In some portions of it, every acre of land has been sold 
within the memory of persons now living. In the north, 
where wealth grows rapidly, and the best soils are cultivated, 
the tendency to division is greater than in the south : and it 
is far greater in the neighbourhoods of rapidly-advancing 
Liverpool and Manchester, than in those of declining Win- 
chester and Bristol. In the one direction we see a daily 
increasing tendency towards harmony and union between 
the owner of the land and the man who cultivates it : while 
in the other we see universal discord and disunion, marked by 
perpetual barn-burnings, poaching, Rebecca-riots, and trials 
for arson and for violations of the game laws : all tending to 
show a very demoralized condition of society. When wealth 
grows, men unite, morally and physically : and the more they 
tend to unite, the faster it grows, and the greater is the ten- 
dency towards division of land. When wealth diminishes 
and population declines, it invariably concentrates itself in 
fewer hands. 

In France, always at war, wealth could not grow. Men 
cultivated the poor soils, with the worst instruments. Pro- 
perty concentrated itself in the hands of the church and the 
great nobles. The Revolution came, and it annihilated both. 
To prevent the future concentration of land, it was enacted 



WEALTH AND LAND. 143 

that at the death of the owner it should be divided among his 
children, excepting, however, a very small share that he 
might, if he thought proper, bequeath heyond the limits of 
Ids family. The confiscation was bad. It was a violation 
of the rights of property, and such measures are always 
bad : always impolitic : because nature remedies all griev- 
ances, when permitted to act. It was, however, done, and 
nothing now was needed but to permit labour to be applied 
to compelling the land to yield up its rich treasures, and thus 
to cause wealth to grow : and' that wealth would have been ap- 
plied to the further improvement of the land, increasing the 
product and enablinga constantly increasing population to ob- 
tain larger supplies of food in return to the labour employed in 
producing, and in fashioning^ on the ground and in direct 
contact with the producer, the various products of the soil. 

Such, how^ever, w^as not the policy of the rulers, or of the 
gentlemen, of France. They preferred Italy, Germany, 
Spain, and even Russia, to their own soil, and they exhausted 
the population and the wealth of the Empire, in vain endea- 
vours to obtain from abroad what at home nature courted 
them to accept. With the battle of Waterloo closed a 
period of exhaustion ; but, since that time, repeated revolu- 
tions and attempts thereat have prevented the growth of any 
feeling of security, while the maintenance of immense armies 
and fleets : expensive palaces : and kings and princes : and a 
body of officials, w^hose name is legion : have prevented and 
still prevent the growth of wealth and population, without 
which the better soils cannot be cultivated. The consequence 
is, that there is no demand for labour, and the process of 
division goes on. More than two and a half millions of pro- 
prietors have incomes of $10 or less. Almost a million have 
between $10 and $20, and seven hundred and thirty-seven 
thousand have between $20 and $40. Between $40 and $100, 
there are seven hundred thousand : while the whole number of 
families whose revenue exceeds $2000 is under seven thousand. 

Properties are in many cases, so subdivided that men are 



144 WEALTH AND LAND. 

willing to abandon them to the government, but even this 
they cannot do, except on payment of a tax of about forty 
cents, and until that shall be paid they mus! remain re- 
sponsible for the taxes on the land, averaging twenty cents 
per acre. If they attempt to sell them, the tax is equivalent 
to two years' rent. Under such circumstances, it is not extra- 
ordinary that the land should be almost literally shingled 
over with mortgages, notwithstanding the enormous charges 
for fees of registration, &c., by which the interest is not un- 
frequently doubled, and sometimes raised even to a higher 
point. Interest and taxes swallow up, as we have already 
said, seventy per cent, of the rent, and the balance is squab- 
bled for between the poor proprietor and the neighbouring 
lawyer. A century since, the families that lived by the law 
were thirty thousand in number, and the business was im- 
mensely lucrative. Since then the number has, we believe, 
greatly increased, and we can hardly doubt that the amount 
divided among them has also increased. The whole system 
of France tends to remove property out of the control of those 
who have laboured for its production, and to give it to those 
who have not laboured : and tending thereby to produce that 
grinding down " into the fine and shifting sand which is the 
basis of" — not democracy but — turbulence, anarchy and 
slavery. Throughout her whole history it has been seen 
forcing men to live in villages while cultivating land at a 
distance, thus diminishing greatly the productiveness of 
labour : and now, we see there two millions of poor proprie- 
tors, with their little bits of garden, pasture, and arable land, 
and vineyards, scarcely ever lying together ; but here a little 
and there a little, some in the valley and some on the hill, 
by which any improvement is rendered impossible. The 
foreclosure of mortgages, therefore, comes, and the real 
owners — the mortgagees — take possession. How far such 
is the tendency may be seen from the fact that in the ten 
years from 1826 to 1835, thirty per cent, of the whole 
territorial property changed hands by sale, exchange, and 



WEALTH AND LAND. 145 

forfeiture, being about as much as changed by means of 
inheritance and gift. Such is the necessary consequence of 
the present state of things. 

In the Netherlands, the power of division exists in its full 
extent, yet there the son does not claim his part merely be- 
cause entitled to it. Wealth increases because men cultivate 
fertile soils, and a demand for labour consequently exists in 
other employments. The consumer and producer are near 
neighbours to each other. If the piece which the son may claim 
be not sufficient to afford him support, he lets or sells it to 
his brother : and thus the tendency to division is counteracted 
by the power of the owner to judge for himself as to the most 
advantageous mode of disposing of his time. So in Norway, 
distinguished for the industry and economy of its people, 
both wealth and population grow, and the tendency towards 
grinding down the land has no existence. Properties there 
remain undiminished for centuries. 

In the United States, the right of primogeniture existed. 
It disappeared as wealth and population grew. In no part 
of the world does the democratic tendency exist so much as 
in Massachusetts and generally in New England, and in 
none are the forms used in the conveyance of land so sim- 
ple, yet there the tendency to minute subdivision has no ex- 
istence. M. de Tocqueville himself informs us that the ^' laws 
of the United States are extremely favourable to a division 
of landed property : but that a cause which is more power- 
ful than the laws prevents property from being divided to 
excess." He adds, that "the law has abolished the right of 
primogeniture, but that circumstances have concurred to re- 
establish it under a form of which none can complain, and 
by which no just rights are impaired." The reason for this 
is, simply, that wealth and the demand for labour and skill 
grow more rapidly than population. No one will cultivate 
a piece of land that will not afford him full wages, and 
hence we find, invariably, that when too small for advan- 
tageous division, one son takes the property, paying to the 

13 



146 WEALTH AND LAND. 

others their share, to enable them to apply, with advantage 
to themselves, their labour, or their skill, in Lowell, or in 
Providence. In no country is the tendency to perfect indi- 
viduality and freedom of action so great ; in none is the ten- 
dency to union so universal : and in none is the power of 
man over land so complete. 

Perfect individuality, and the tendency to union, keep 
pace, invariably, with the growth of weahh and the division 
of land. The land of the great noble of the middle ages 
was bound to give him a certain amount of rent, and for this 
his serfs were jointly bound. Unhmited liability — solidarite — 
was the universal rule. If one failed, to work or pay, others 
must make up the deficiency. The serf was nameless. He 
was merely a serf: one of those who were to do the work. 
So we find it, even now, in India, where villages are assessed 
en masse; and when some of the unfortunate ryots abandon 
their little properties in despair at their utter inability to com- 
ply with the unceasing demands for rent claimed by the 
Company's government, the rest are held liable for the defi- 
ciency. So again, in France, where the people of provinces, 
and towns, and villages, were all held Hable for the taxes ; and 
when the dragons of Louvois had expelled the laborious 
and economical Huguenots, the CathoKcs who remained 
were held bound to make up the full amount. 

With the growth of population and of wealth, land becomes 
divided, and individuals make contracts to pay fixed rents ; 
and thus every man acquires power to determine for himself 
what shall be the extent of his liability : and this tendency is 
always greatest where men cultivate the richest soils, as may 
be seen in England. The tenant in Dorset or Hampshire 
has no rights. His landlord's game consumes his crop, yet 
must he pay the full rent ; whereas in Lancashire or Lincoln, 
the rights of all are strictly defined. In the one, poor men, 
who live in mud hovels, still cultivate the poor lands first oc- 
cupied. In the other, they live in houses, and cultivate the 
rich soils that two centuries since were swamps and forests. 



WEALTH AND LAND. 147 

This tendency to freedom of individual action in the mak- 
ing of contracts for other purposes keeps pace with that in 
relation to land. Throughout Europe, the right of men to 
associate has been at all times limited, through a jeal- 
ousy of every thing like tendency to union among the peo- 
ple, which induced sovereigns and those by whom they 
were surrounded, to insist upon continuing in relation to 
them the principle of unlimited liability. Exemptions from 
it have always been obtained as matters of favour : by aid of 
royal charters. These exemptions are more or less numerous 
as population and wealth increase rapidly or slowly, and as 
the better or poorer soils are cultivated. In France, they 
are granted invariably as favours, and applications therefor, 
unsupported by powerful interest, are useless.* In England, 
they were granted only to a few powerful companies, to enable 
them to monopolize certain branches of trade : and even so 
recently as the latter part of the last century, the formation 
of joint-stock associations with transferable stock, for any 
purpose, was absolutely prohibited. With the gradual in- 
crease of wealth and population, and with the cultivation of 
the better soils, we see a gradual relaxation of the system 
of solidarite, and charters are now granted to railroad com- 
panies, because without them roads could not be made. 
They are, however, still refused to associations for most other 
purposes. 

In the United States, we can see this tendency to perfect 
freedom in the making of contracts, whether for the 
rent of land or for other purposes, steadily increasing 
as we pass from those States in which they cultivate the 
poor lands to those in which they cultivate the rich soils of 
the river bottoms. In the south, men work in gangs, and 
each man is individually liable for the performance of the 



* The reader who desires to understand the restrictions on Commercial 
Association in France, will find them fully explained in the Revue des deux 
Mondes, for Silly, 1845, in an article by ilf. Coquelin, translated and republished 
in the Merchant's Magazine for May and June, 1845. 



148 WEALTH AND LAND. 

whole work. No contract for rent is here made, and here it 
is that we find the greatest hostility to exemption from the 
same principle in regard to all other of the pursuits of life. 
In the new States of the west, where population is small and 
scattered, and the rich soils are untouched, the same state 
of things is found. Union among themselves is difficult, 
and jealousy of unions exists. In Pennsylvania, much of 
whose richest lands is yet uncleared, the same jealousy has 
always existed ; but as the various soils : the lime, the coal, 
and the iron-bearing soils : are coming into activity, it tends 
gradually to pass away. In no part of the Union has there 
existed the same tendency to the concentration of land in 
the hands of a few persons, nor has there been elsewhere 
exhibited so forcibly its effect in preventing the union 
of man. The first has been always, to a great extent, held 
in masses, and corporations have been formed for the pur- 
pose of so continuing to hold it. This latter state of things 
is found chiefly in the coal region of the Lehigh river, which 
while possessed of every advantage for a great trade, has ever 
been unable to contend, because of the monopoly of land, 
with the Schuylkill region, in which the lands were divided 
among numerous owners, and were frequently passing from 
hand to hand. In the first, the union of man has no exist- 
ence, and wealth grows slowly. In the second, it is seen 
everywhere, and wealth and population grow rapidly, pro- 
ducing a demand for the products of the earth tending to 
bring the more fertile soils into full activity. 

As we pass north from Pennsylvania, we find land more 
divided, population more dense, and a greater tendency to 
perfect individuality, accompanied by an increasing tendency 
to union, and an increasing power to unite on such terms as 
may be deemed best for the parties who contract. These 
things are found to a greater extent in New York than in 
Pennsylvania : but as we approach Massachusetts and Rhode 
Island, where men devote themselves most assiduously to 
bringing into activity all the powers of the earth, we find in- 



WEALTH AND LAND. 149 

dividuality, the tendency to union, and the power to unite, in 
a greater degree than in any other portion of the world. 
There, all have property. There the rights of person and pro- 
perty are most strictly defined and best maintained : and there 
it is that large capitalists and little shopkeepers; large farmers 
and little labourers; large manufacturers and little spinners and 
weavers; widows and orphans, clergymen and doctors, editors 
and authors, and lawyers ; are found uniting for the building 
of factories, the making of railroads, and every other of the 
various modes in which wealth can most advantageously beT 
applied to increase the productiveness of labour. 

If we desire now to find the cause of the rapid advance of 
the poor and scattered colonists of the United States towards 
wealth and power, we must seek it in the division of the 
land. Every man lives, or, if he will, may live, in his own 
house and lot, or on his own farm. He works, or, if he 
will, he may, in his own shop. He drives his own wagon, 
and commands the ship, of which he is owner in whole or 
in part. The ship carpenter builds the ship of which he is 
to be part owner, and the iron founder makes engines for the 
factory in whose stock he has purchased shares. The 
female operative works in the mill of which she is part 
owner, that she may gather means to furnish the house 
of which she is to be sole mistress : and the coal miner 
looks forward to the time when he can work his own vein 
of coal, and pay wages to men that are following in his 
footsteps. All these phenomena, although some of them 
are apparently unconnected with land, are the natural results 
of its division. The landlord who collects large rents 
patronises his own farmer, his own agent, his own shop- 
keeper, his own lawyer, his own doctor, and his own 
carpenter, and these men have all what is termed a 
valuable <' connection." All this is fully exhibited in the 
Lehigh coal region of Pennsylvania. Great companies 
prefer great tenants, and little men cannot rent mines. 
Great tenants keep great shops, at which the little mec 

13* 



150 WEALTH AND LAND. 

must make their exchanges, for competition is rendered 
impossible. Great companies and tenants patronize their 
own lawyers, and doctors, and carpenters, and bridge-build- 
ers, and road-makers ; the consequence of which is an uni- 
versal dulness and stagnation. The miner lives in the com- 
pany's house, and works company land ; and his daughter is 
idle, for there is no demand for labour. With wealth un- 
limited beneath the surface, the houses upon it wear all the 
marks of poverty ; the quantity of lime needed to improve 
even the exterior appearance of their houses being deemed a 
luxury too great to be afforded to their occupants. 

If, now, we pass westward, a few miles, to the Schuylkill 
region, where land is divided, and where each man looks after 
his own property, we see a totally different state of affairs. 
There patronage cannot exist. Every working miner seeks to 
have his own house and lot, and each looks to the time when 
he may work for himself, either as tenant or owner. Every 
man selects his own shop with which to trade ; his own lawyer 
with whom to consult ; his own doctor ; and his own carpen- 
ter, when he would build. The consequence is universal 
activity and energy, and universal demand for labour. The 
daughter finds a demand for her services in making dresses 
for her thriving neighbours ; and she can marry, because she 
can aid in furnishing the house ; while her husband, the jour- 
neyman carpenter, or iron-founder, becomes himself a master, 
having his own shop, and living in hi&own house, occupied by 
his own wife and children ; and that house is built on his own 
lot, within which he cultivates his own garden in his hours 
of leisure. 

If, now, we substitute England and America for the Lehigh 
and Schuylkill coal regions, the same picture will answer. 
The first is filled with great land-owners, great farmers, great 
merchants, great bankers, great lawyers, great architects, 
great manufacturers, great ship-owners, and great corpora- 
tions, all living in palaces ; while the people cultivate the 
lands of others: live in the houses of others; work in the 



WEALTH AND LAND. 151 

factories or the mines of others ; tend the shops of others ; 
command the ships of others; and, as a necessary conse- 
quence, a vast portion are obliged to eat the food of others. 
Patronage is universal. The great do not need to work, and 
the small work without spirit. The first are idle, for want of 
disposition to work ; and the second are often so, for want of 
work to do. The first waste, because they may. The second 
do not economize, because they w^ant confidence in the future. 

In America, from north to south, we find the state of 
things that has been described as existing in the Schuylkill 
valley : greatest in the north, and gradually diminishing as 
we pass south and west. Every man is working for himself, 
and anxious to have his own house and lot : or farm: or shop. 
Those who have houses and lots, and farms and shops, have 
in them their own little savings' banks, in which they deposit 
all their sparehoursand half hours: their spare dollars and half 
dollars : and thus there is made, almost insensibly, an addi- 
tion to the wealth of the community, the amount of which, 
could it be ascertained, would be deemed incredible. Those 
who have not yet houses and lots, or farms, or shops, 
have at hand the little factory, or the little bank, owned in 
shares : the savings' bank of the neighbourhood : in which 
they make their deposits, there to remain until they shall 
have enough to buy the house or the farm, or to set up the 
shop. Wealth thus accumulates rapidly, and produces a 
constant demand for labour. Every one feels that he can 
"go ahead" if he will, and everybody, therefore, does; 
the necessary consequence of which is, that those who are 
'« ahead" must work to keep so. If they pause but for a 
moment they are left behind; and this is equally true, intel- 
lectually and physically. Every man will educate his children, 
and ivill have his own newspaper, and will have portraits, 
whether in oil or daguerreotype, of his family ; and will in- 
vent his own machine ; and the rich must study books, and 
newspapers, and pictures, and machinery, if they would 
maintain their position in the world. 

To this state of things is due the vast productive power of 



152 WEALTH AND LAND. 

the Union, far exceeding that of the twenty-eight millions 
composing the population of Great Britain and Ireland: and 
not to the abundance of land, upon the poor soils of which 
they have been forced to scatter themselves ; expending upon 
them, and upon distant roads and canals, labour that Avoald 
have been thrice more productive if employed upon the river 
bottoms of the older States: upon the marl and the limestone, 
the coal and the iron: all of which w^ould long since have 
been done, could they have concentrated themselves as they 
would naturally have desired to do. 

To this it is due, that while they are the greatest producers 
and the greatest consumers, they are the greatest accumulators 
of the world. Every man has, in his own home, his own 
saving fund : in his own farm, or house, or shop: and each is 
desirous of making his deposits as large as possible. There- 
fore, each dislikes taxes. Taxes come wuth wars. There- 
fore, each dislikes wars. The question of peace or war rests 
always with himself, and others like himself, who cultivate 
their own land and pay their ow^n taxes ; and who, having 
their own houses, and lots, and shops, and mills, and facto- 
ries, to look after, have no need to seek employment in the 
work of robbing and plundering their neighbours. There- 
fore, he and they prefer peace. With peace grow wealth, and 
strength, and the power of self-protection, whether by means 
of armies and fleets : if needed: or by means of law^s for re- 
straining their neighbours who desire to compel them to use 
their ships, or to wear their cloths. They are too rich to quar- 
rel with ; and therefore it is that causes of quarrel, whether 
in regard to boundary lines ; or indemnity for spoliations on 
the ocean ; or restrictions on their commerce ; or interference 
with the personal rights of their citizens ; disappear. They 
prefer peace, and therefore it is that they have it. They 
need, therefore, neither fleets nor armies.* 



* War with Mexico could never have arisen had it been left to the people to 
declare it. Mexico commenced it, and battle and victory were the result. Their 
representatives accepted the defiance; but had it been left to the people to de- 
cide the question, the decision, even then, would have been for peace. 



WEALTH ANI> LAND. 153 

If, now, to the great accumulations resulting from the ex- 
istence of these millions of savings' banks, small and great, 
we add those resulting from the absence of taxes for the sup- 
port of ruinous wars : and for preparations for war in time of 
peace: which latter, on the scale of those of England, would 
consume a hundred millions a year: we may readily account 
for at least five hundred millions now annually invested, 
in addition to what would be invested were land held by 
great landholders : by men who sought in the maintenance 
of colonies, requiring fleets and armies, the means of pro- 
viding for themselves and their dependents. These five 
hundred millions add annually to the productive power at 
least one hundred millions. If the reader will calculate 
the result of such an investment, and such a return, he will 
be enabled to account for the fact that the United States are 
now the wealthiest country of the world ; and the result at 
which he will arrive will be that it is due to the division, and 
not to the quantity, of land. 

This estimate of the excess of the power of accumulation 
is equal to twenty-four dollars, or five pounds sterling, per 
head. A very large portion of this sum may be accounted 
for by the greater diligence of men who apply their labour on 
their own property ; but much is the result of other causes. 
England persists in relying upon the poor soils of Poland, 
Canada, and other parts of the world, for a portion of her sup- 
ply of food, which she might obtain from her ov/n rich ones ; 
and that is now obtained by the aid of the most cumbrous 
machinery. It is a rule in mechanics, that the more directly 
power is applied, the less is the friction and the greater is the 
effect : and that with every increase in the quantity of ma- 
chinery, friction increases and power diminishes. So is it 
here. The friction is great, and hence it is that food is high, 
and that wages are low. In many parts of England, the agri- 
cultural labourer has but nine shillings per week, while the 
ordinary price of wheat is not less than fifty shillmgs per 
quarter, and it is fi^equently more. The labourer has for his 



154 WEALTH AND LAND. 

week's work, therefore, but about a bushel and a quarter, or 
a bushel and a third per week, for all purposes, and he 
can accumulate nothing. Throughout the United States, 
the labourer has about seventy-five cents per day, which 
will not vary materially from the average price of a bushel 
of wheat : which would give six bushels as the price of a 
week's work. He can, therefore, consume more than the 
English labourer receives, and still lay up more than 
half his wages. That he does this is every day seen. 
In tens of thousands of cases, the unmarried labourer 
has from a hundred to a hundred and twenty dollars per 
annum, and his board. His clothing costs him little, and 
nearly the whole amount of his wages remains in the 
hands of his employer, or is temporarily invested : after- 
wards to be employed in the purchase of a little farm. The 
large capitalist profits in a similar manner from the cheap- 
ness of food, and the result of such accumulation by the two 
classes is prodigious. Again, no capital need remain idle, 
or even but partially productive, where the habit of combined 
exertion exists in so great a degree as in the United States, 
and where capital is active, labour is rendered productive. 
In England, on the contrary, the former often stagnates, and 
the latter is often unproductive. 

The waste in that country is almost incredible. The city 
of London,* has vast estates, chiefly Irish confiscations, that 

* The income of this corporation is as follows : 

Trust estates - ■ . . £360,000 

Local rates - - - 230,000 

Coal duties and street and market tolls 200,000 

Freedom and livery fines - - 50,000 

Port of London - - - 60,000 

£900,000, or $4,320,000. 

And this with a population of 129,000. The number of officers is two 
hundred and sixty-three, with salaries varying from £100 to £8000 per annum, 
and these offices are filled invariably by friends and relations of aldermen and 
common council men. The private extortion of the body, individually and 
collectively, adds greatly to the above amount. The consequence of all this is, 
that " the prudent fly to escape extortion, but the pauper remains'' — and the poor 



WEALTH AND LAND. 155 

yield above <£300,000 per annum, most of which is squan- 
dered ; while poor taxes are heavy, and the provision for 
education is very bad. A single entertainment has cost 
$120,000, and a single officer receives nearly $40,000 per 
annum. The salaries of the legal staff amount to nearly 
$200,000, and the whole amount of salaries exceeds half a 
million of dollars. Large estates, here as elsewhere, beget 
habits of great expenditure and great waste, and thus the 
leaks are almost incredibly great. Massachusetts, with a 
population of 800,000, expends about $2,000,000, or less 
than half of what is expended by the city of London : yet, 
out of this sum, she appropriates $300,000 to the support 
of infirm and aged poor, and about seven hundred thousand 
dollars for the maintenance of public schools. There men 
manage their own affairs : because land is divided, and 
man united. 

The admirable effect of the division of land, consequent 
upon the growth of population and wealth, is fully shown in 
Prussia, by the result of the abolition of leases in perpetuity, 
and their conversion into freeholds, with compensation to the 
owner of the land, at the rate of twenty-five years' purchase 
of his interest. The great landholders were encumbered 
with debts, and their estates were loaded with mortgages 
which prevented improvement. In Pomerania alone, the 
encumbrances amounted to $24,000,000. The peasant 
holdings were freed at once, on payment of the stipulated 
sum ; and the small landholders enjoyed a credit that to the 
great ones had been denied. All other impediments to the 
free disposal of land by sale, gift, or will, were also abolish- 
ed ; and the result is seen in the fact that wealth and popu- 
lation are now advancing in Prussia at a rate unknown to 
the rest of continental Europe : and that she is now at the 



rates amount to j£90,000. Here we have, in miniature, a perfect representa- 
tion of the whole system of England. The reader who desires to understand 
both, will obtain the knowledge he seeks by reference to the Westminster Re- 
view, vol. 45, p. 193. 



156 WEALTH AND LAND. 

head of the great commercial union of northern Germany, 
throughout the whole extent of which exists perfect freedom 
of internal trade. Here, as elsewhere, the division of land 
has been attended with the union of man, and the extension 
of cultivation over the fertile soils. 

The PAST says to the landlord of the present : '^ If you 
desire that your lands become valuable : yielding large rents : 
labour to promote the maintenance of peace." 

To the tenant it says : "If you desire to become the 
owner of the land you cultivate : labour to promote the main- 
tenance of peace, and to prevent the waste of wealth on 
fleets and armies." 

To the labourer it says: "If you desire to own your 
house, and lot, and garden, your own shop, or your own 
farm : to have your own wife and children : to read your 
own books and newspapers : to go to your own church : to 
send your children to your own school : and to see them 
prosper in an active world, where rapidly increasing wealth 
gives increased wages to a rapidly increasing population : 
labour to promote the maintenance of peace and economy." 

To the nation : " If you desire to acquire, individually and 
collectively, the powder of perfect self-protection : avoid war 
and preparation for war." 



MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 157 



CHAPTER V. 

MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 

The man who cultivates the poor soils, barters the com- 
modity he produces for the one he wants. His production 
is small, and consists chiefly of food, most of which is 
needed for himself and his family. His exchanges are few 
and small. As population and w^ealth increase, and as the 
more fertile soils are brought into cultivation, food becomes 
more abundant, and he has more to spare to be exchanged 
for such other commodities as he is now enabled to con- 
sume, and we find him gradually adopting a standard of 
value to be used in his exchanges. In some places cowrie 
shells pass as money. In others prices are measured by 
tobacco, the legislator being paid for his services by the 
delivery of a certain number of pounds : while other quan- 
tities are fixed as the price of other services, and of the 
commodities most commonly in use. Tobacco is, however, 
bulky and liable to injury by time, and forms a standard of 
a very inconvenient kind. Wealth and population still fur- 
ther increase, and men are found adopting as standards 
for the measurement of values, silver and gold : both con- 
stantly in demand for various purposes in the arts ; both 
representing in a very small compass a large amount of 
labour ; both free from all danger of injury from rust ; 
and therefore termed the precious metals. Those who de- 
sire to part with other commodities now sell them for money, 
and those who purchase, deliver, or contract to deliver, 
money, which becomes the universal currency, and the habit 
of bartering commodities passes gradually out of use. 

14 



158 MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 

He now cultivates other and better soils, and as the pro- 
ductiveness of labour grows, exchanges grow in number 
and amount : and more and more of the precious metals, 
termed money, are required for the purpose of effecting those 
exchanges. Representing so large an amount of value, and 
being themselves of so little bulk, they are, more than others, 
liable to be lost or stolen ; and their possessors : those who 
hold portions of their capital uninvested, and waiting for the 
opportunity of re-investment : desire to place them in secu- 
rity. At first, we find them placed with traders called gold- 
smiths, and afterwards with bankers: or in banks. In some 
places, banks merely hold them for the owners, to be return- 
ed, or to be transferred on books kept for that purpose ; but 
as exchanges become more numerous, checks or drafts are 
devised, by means of which the property therein is trans- 
ferred without the trouble of visiting the bank. With another 
step, we find the machinery of exchange still further im- 
proved. Banks now furnish certificates for given sums, large 
and small, by aid of which transfers are made with a facility 
before unknown; and thus the machinery for the exchange of 
property from hand to hand is perfected. 

As the better soils come further into action, and labour 
becomes more and more productive, the fashioner and the 
producer come more and more together. Communities 
now arise, in each of which are to be performed numerous 
exchanges, and in each are men whose capital is at one mo- 
ment invested in merchandise, and at another uninvested : 
taking the form of money, and while remaining in that form 
yielding no return. In each of these communities, a shop 
is needed for facilitating transactions in the commodity 
now used as currency. One man desires to lodge his little 
stock for safe keeping. Another, to obtain an order for mo- 
ney to be paid at another place : and a third, to have bank 
notes that he can use in the performance of his exchanges, 
and thus be relieved of the necessity for carrying silver or 



MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 159 

gold, which although far less bulky than tobacco, are far 
more bulky than the note. 

With each step in this course, we find a great saving of 
labour, and an increase in the quantity that may be applied 
to the work of production. The man who has a thousand 
dollars, or pounds, places it in the bank, and the bank pays 
it out in ten, twenty, or fifty small sums, of the precise 
amount desired : and thus the owner is saved the time of 
counting his money and of carrying it about with him, as 
well as the risk of loss. In the outset we find bankers 
charging a commission for the facility thus aflforded, but by 
degrees, they are seen performing these important services, 
and aflfording the still greater facility of bank notes, free of 
all expense to those who use them. The machinery of ex- 
change becomes therefore less costly as it becomes more per- 
fect : and wealth accumulates with increased rapidity. 

In the various smaller communities now growing up, are 
numerous little capitalists preparing for the purchase of 
houses and lots, or little farms, or for the opening of shops : 
while among them are some larger ones, that occasionally 
have their means disengaged. To all of them, interest is 
desirable, while it is in the highest degree advantageous to 
the community that the accumulations of the tailor and car- 
penter ; the little fortune of the widow or the orphan : and 
the savings of the doctor or the clergyman : should be kept in 
active operation, facilitating the application of labour to pro- 
duction. By the combined effort of these little capitalists, a 
shop is opened for the purpose of lending out their money, and 
that of affording to the people of the neighbourhood a secure 
place of deposit for such portions of their respective capi- 
tals as may from time to time become disengaged. The 
stock therein is held in shares, transferable with little trouble : 
and thus the shoemaker, when ready to buy his house, sells 
out to the tailor ; and the clerk, when ready to open a shop, 
parts with his interest to the clergyman. The joint capital 
is security to those who trade with it for the safe re- 



160 MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 

turn of their money, and now each man having a place of 
safe deposit, he no longer finds it necessary to hide or 
bury his little stock : nor even his larger amounts of dis- 
engaged capital. The little bank, thus organized, aids the 
farmer in his purchases of manure ; the shopkeeper in ob- 
taining a larger supply of goods ; and the builder in obtain- 
ing bricks and timber; and thus the little savings of the neigh- 
bourhood are always actively employed on the spot on which 
they have been made. The management of the little ma* 
chine, though inexpensive, constitutes a deduction from the 
interest received : and to pay these expenses, the bankers 
must either make a charge for the accommodation they afford 
in receiving, guarding, and paying out again at the pleasure 
and in the sums that suit the convenience of their owners, 
the small amounts that they are accustomed to keep for 
their daily business ; or the larger ones that pass among 
them as one or another buys or sells a house, or a piece 
of land : or they must pay themselves with the interest 
derived from lending out the moneys thus placed with them 
for security. The facility of investment is perfect. Land in 
large and small lots; and houses, and stocks in little institu- 
tions for insurance, or manufactures ; or shares in ships and 
railroads, and turnpikes ; may always be bought : and there- 
fore but little capital accumulates in banks, to be used for 
their own benefit ; and their profits therefore just suffice to pay 
their expenses, and to enable their ow^ners to receive the 
same rate of interest that they would have if their money 
were lent on mortgage. The advantage derived by them 
from the existence of the bank, is the facility with which 
small sums may be temporarily invested, and recalled : while 
the community profits by the fact that all wealth is actively 
employed. If the labourer did not lend his fellow labourer 
his horse, he could not borrow his cart, and then two horses 
and carts would be needed where the work was perhaps in- 
sufficient for even one : and if the owners of little sums of 
money kept them in old stockings, they might themselves find 



-MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 161 

it difficult to borrow when occasion required it. The money- 
shop now constitutes a little savings' bank for disengaged ca- 
pital : as lands, lots, and houses constitute little savings' banks 
for the otherwise spare labour of their owners. As the fer- 
tile soils come more and more into cultivation, and as with the 
growth of population and wealth the fashioner takes more 
and more his place by the side of the producer ; the tendency 
to concentration increases, and is accompanied with a con- 
stant diminution in the quantity required of the machinery of 
exchange used in passing commodities from hand to hand ; 
because the farmer exchanges directly with the tanner and 
the shoemaker, and the hatter with the dealer in sugar and 
coffee, the balances alone being paid in money : and is also 
accompanied with a constantly increasing facility of in- 
vestment, tending to diminish the quantity of money idle in 
the hands of its owner, and seeking employment. The dimi- 
nution in the amount of capital invested in the machinery 
of exchange from hand to hand, equally with the diminution 
in that required for its transfer from place to place : the one 
called money and the other wagons : tends to enable men to 
apply more labour to production, and thus to bring into ac- 
tivity the more fertile soils, with increased return to both la- 
bour and capital : and towards the production of this result 
the establishment of the little money-shop greatly contri- 
butes. 

The owner of uninvested capital : money, or currency : 
keeps some of it in his pocket-book, and some of it in the 
bank. The former is called circulation, and the latter is 
known as deposits. The proportion which the former bears 
to the latter, depends upon the proximity or remoteness of 
the money-shop, or bank. If it be near, he will keep very 
few notes on hand, because he can have more at any mo- 
ment, and his check will always answer in their stead ; but if 
it be at a distance of several miles, he must always have with 
him as many notes as will answer his purpose for a week, 
at least. Every increase in the facility of obtaining the de- 

14* 



162 MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 

scription of currency that is needed, tends therefore to dimi- 
nish the quantity kept on hand, while it tends to facilitate ex- 
changes and promote the growth of wealth. With the 
growth of wealth and population, there is a tendency to in- 
crease in the number of shops trading in money, or banks ; 
to increase in the facility of obtaining the machinery of ex- 
change, called money ; and to diminution in the proportion 
which money, whether gold, silver, or bank notes, or in any 
form other than that of credits, transferable by checks or 
drafts, bears to the operation of trade. The proportion which 
the coin, or the bank notes, used in London or New York, 
bears to the trade of those cities, is vastly smaller than that 
of Paris or St. Petersburgh, and less in all than in Mexico 
or Lima. The circulation of London is not probably greater 
than that of communities whose trade is not one-hundredth 
part as great ; nor does that of New York exceed in amount 
what is required by counties of fifty thousand inhabitants. 
The more perfectly the number of banks is in accordance 
with the amount of business to be done, the less is the quan- 
tity of circulation that can be maintained ; and thus the power 
of banks to profit by aid of that circulation tends to diminish, 
as with the division of land and growth of trade the facility of 
investing capital is increased : and they are thus forced more 
and more to look to their own capital for the profits of busi- 
ness. With each such step, their action becomes more 
uniform and steady, and they themselves become more 
safe. Their insecurity results always from unsteadiness. 
Unsteadiness results always from over-trading. Over-trad- 
ing can take place only by aid of deposits or circulation. 
Freedom of action tends to limit both, and by so doing to 
prevent over-trading, and thus to produce steadiness in their 
action and in the value of money. 

All this is perfectly exemplified in the freeest system that 
exists. Rhode Island, with a population of about 100,000, 
has sixty-five banks, with capitals varying from $20,000 to 
$500,000: and the combined capital is above $10,000,000. 



MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 163 

Every village has its shoe-shop, its smith-shop, and its mo- 
ney-shop. Every man has at hand a little saving fund, or 
bank, owned generally by people like himself: men who 
work : and in this bank he deposits his little savings, buy- 
ing first one share, and then another, until at length he is 
enabled to buy a little farm, or open a shop : or commence 
manufacturing on his own account : when he sells out to 
some one of his neighbours who is following in the same 
course.* The bank derives, from the use of its deposits and 
from its circulation, sufficient profit to pay its expenses, and 
no more; because when the trade in money is free, the quan- 
tity of idle capital remaining in the form of money, whether 
real or imaginary, will always be small ; as will be the quan- 
tity of circulation required. In no part of the world is the 
proportion which coin and notes bear to the amount of trade 
so small as there, and in the other States of New England : 
yet in none do there exist such perfect facilities for furnishing 
circulation. In no part does the individual banker so little 
appear. In none does the bank trade so much upon capital, 



* The following statement of one of their banks shows the mann> in 
which the small institutions of New England are owned : — 

Females, -------- 2,438 shares. 

Mechanics, - 673 « 

Farmers and labourers, ----- 1,245 « 

Savings' banks, - - - - - - 1,013 « 

Guardians, ------- 630 " 

Estates, - 307 « 

Charitable institutions, ----- 548 " 

Corporations and State, - - - - - 157 " 

Government officers, ------ 438 " 

Mariners, - - 434 « 

Merchants, 2,038 « 

Traders, 191 « 

Lawyers, -------- 377 « 

Physicians, ------- 336 « 

Clergymen, 220 « 

Total, - - - 11,045 shares 

It would be difficult to imagine any thing more democratic. 



164 MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 

and so little on credit. In none, consequently, are banks 
so sieady and so safe. 

Perfect freedom in the employment of capital : the only 
true regulator : never has existed anywhere, to its full extent, 
except in the beautiful system under which that State has 
flourished, and has been enabled to maintain a currency less 
subject to fluctuations than any other that the w^orld has yet 
seen. Of all the communities of the world, it is the one that 
can boast of the greatest number of banks, and greatest 
amount of capital therein invested, in proportion to its popu- 
lation ; and it can show that its banks, because of the perfect 
freedom there enjoyed, and because of the free exercise of the 
right of association for banking and other purposes, w^ere 
enabled to pass through the calamitous period from 1835 to 
1842, with no alteration in their loans, to the extent of even 
three per cent, oi \h.eu ?LTiio\mi. They cannot expand im- 
properly, because the power of competition is complete, and 
rival institutions would follow such expansion : and they are 
thus shown to be governed by the same law w^hich forbids the 
shoemaker and the tailor, by charging exorbitant prices, to 
afford inducements to other tailors and shoemakers to come 
and '^push them from their stools." Not having the power 
of undue expansion, they cannot be compelled to contract, 
and thus both they and those w^ho trade with them exer- 
cise in full perfection the power of self-government. Con- 
tractions not being required, their customers do not fail, nor 
do they fail themselves : as is shown by the fact that in the 
last thirty-eight years of war and commercial convulsions, 
the failures have been but two in number, and their joint 
capitals were less than $50,000. There, the machinery of 
exchange from hand to hand is more perfect, and less costly 
than elsewhere in the world : and simply because, there, man 
and land, and wealth, are least fettered by regulation. 

The system of Massachusetts stands next in the order of 
freedom and security. It is less free, because banking capi- 



MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 165 

tal is subject to a tax of one per cent., which limits coiu .pe- 
tition to that point at which banks can make out of their 
circulation and deposits two and a half per cent, in addition 
to the six per cent, earned by their capital ; whereas, in Rhode 
Island, the average excess of loans over capital is but little 
over twenty-five per cent., yielding seven and a half per cent, 
of gross profit, one and a half per cent, of which goes to the 
payment of losses and expenses, and to the gradual accumula- 
tion of surplus funds. Competition produces great economy, 
and the losses would be very small, had the other states, its 
neighbours, the same free system. The fluctuations of New 
York and Pennsylvania often ruin the traders of Rhode 
Island, whose banks have to bear losses of which they are 
not the cause, but they nevertheless divide six per cent, from 
a business exceeding their capitals less than thirty per cent. 
The banker receives the same rate of interest that the trader 
pays : neither more nor less. There is little friction to be 
paid for. The machine moves with a steadiness and regu- 
larity unknown in the world : yet every other state and king- 
dom might have one equally perfect, were they to adopt the 
same means for obtaining it. 

As we pass south and west from New England, we find 
the population becoming more and more scattered, and more 
and more employed in cultivating thin soils, while sur- 
rounded by forests and swamps covering rich soils : and 
"svith each step in our progress we find the trade in money 
becoming less and less free, the quantity of the machinery 
of exchange increasing, and its quality becoming depre- 
ciated. 

New York has had a variety of systems, all involving care 
and supervision on the part of those charged with the busi- 
ness of government, the natural consequence of which is, 
that her system is less advantageous to the community than 
those of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, where the people 
protect themselves. Under her present system, banks are 
made by individuals, and the saving fund character, by 



166 MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 

which they are distinguished in New England, has disap- 
peared, and the local investment of capital is thus prevented. 

Pennsylvarlia is the favoured land of banking and landed 
monopolies. Large banks are permitted to exist while 
small communities throughout the state are denied the privi- 
lege of opening money shops for themselves. Capital is 
forced from the country to the city, where it accumulates, 
somewhat as it does in England, and flows off to the south 
and west, there to be dissipated in wasteful enterprises : 
while the little farmer and trader of the interior are unable to 
obtain the temporary loans necessary to enable the one to pur- 
chase manure, and the other to increase his stock of axes 
and spades, shoes and coats. Her policy is suicidal. She 
abounds in the raw material of wealth, and she expels 
the wealth and the labour required to bring it into activity. 

Passing further south, as men become more scattered, and 
cultivate poorer soils, land is less divided, and the facility 
of investment is diminished: and therewith we find freedom 
of trade gradually decreasing, and States becoming bankers, 
with the usual results of great instability, enormous loss to the 
owner of the bank, and ruin to those who trade with it. Pass- 
ing west, we find on the outer edge of civilization the least 
freedom and the w^orst machinery of exchange. The State of 
Missouri can have but one bank, and that bank will not fur- 
nish more than a given quantity of circulation, be the increase 
of population and trade what it may. It would have been 
quite as judicious in the framers of the constitution had they 
determined that but one railroad should ever exist in the 
state, and that that road should never have more than a cer- 
tain number of engines and cars. The bank note facilitates 
the transfer of property from hand to hand, and the railroad 
car its transfer from place to place. The one is as useful 
as the other, and quite as harmless : as much so as the shoe- 
shop. 



MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 167 

In England, the investment of capital has been at all times 
impeded by land. In many cases, nine-tenths of the latter 
have been owned by persons having but a life-interest there- 
in, and liable to be impeded in their actions or contract, by 
remainder-men. In many others, mortgagees and other 
parties have had interests at variance with those of the 
nominal owner. In most others, the owner of the remain- 
ing tenth would not permit a drain to be dug, or a tile to be 
laid, unless he were permitted to take a tenth of the whole 
product of labour and capital ; while paying no wages to the 
man employed in the work of improvement or cultivation. 
In some, great landlords owning turnpikes wanted large 
tolls; while in others steam-engines were held to be nui- 
sances ; and railroad makers were regarded as enemies, 
to be kept at a distance unless they would consent to pay 
largely for the privilege of doubling the value of the land 
through which their roads were to be made to run. 

The necessary consequence of this has been, that the ma- 
chinery of exchange has been very abundant, and of very 
inferior quality. All facility for local investment has been 
denied, and capital has been forced from the land into 
great towns and cities filled with starving operatives living 
in filthy cellars, whose labour was to be employed in con- 
verting cotton produced in India or America, into cloth to be 
sent to America or Australia ; to be there exchanged for corn 
or wool, that could have been produced at half the cost at 
home : while their employment therein would have tended to- 
wards perfecting the great machine given by the Creator for 
the production of food and wool. To ensure the continuance 
of the power thus to waste labour and capital, colonies have 
been founded and maintained ; and the flag of England has 
been enabled to disport itself over barren rocks in the Medi- 
terranean, wild lands in Canada, and wilder lands occupied 
by wretched tribes in Australia and New Zealand, South- 
ern Africa and Honduras : at the cost of thousands of millions 
that would have made of the United Kingdom a garden, 



168 MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 

occupied by a hundred millions of the best fed, best clothed, 
and best educated people in the world.* 

The machinery of exchange used for the accomplishment 
of these objects has been as costly as it has been bad, and it 
has absorbed eight hundred millions of the savings of the peo- 
ple, in addition to the thousands of millions raised by taxes. 
The owners of those eight hundred millions require divi- 
dends ; and the fleets and armies, which constitute a part of 
this vast system of bad machinery, require pay : and to 
provide for all these charges, fifty millions a year are re- 
quired. The collection of the taxes required for these pur- 
poses produces a demand for a vast quantity of inferior ma- 
chinery, intermediate between the producer and consumer, 
in the form of tax-gatherers : and the payment of these con- 
tributions tends to render necessary another large quantity of 
machinery, in the form of managers of almshouses, poor law 
commissioners, &c., who take the produce and divide it among 
those who desire to consume, but cannot find employment : 
and they cannot do so because the spades and picks that should 
be employed in making roads and trenches at home, have been 
sent to Canada, the Cape of Good Hope, or Australia, to be 
there employed in the cultivation of the thin soils of the hills, 
while rich soils at home remain unimproved and valueless. 

The necessary consequence of all this is a tendency to 
cause the centralization of wealth in places in which it is not 
produced : and in the hands of those who have not laboured 
for its production : and thus to cause waste. Added to this is 
the fact that the mass of the people do not own the land they 
cultivate. Capital accumulates in their hands from the 
commencement to the close of the year, to be distributed 
by the landlord, who gives back to the soil a small 
portion of its product, or not, at his pleasure ; and when he 

* The colonies of England are forty-four in number, and their annual cost, 
exclusive of fleets and armies kept on foot for their protection, exceeds three 
millions, while the whole exports to them are only ten millions. From this 
statement of costs and trade, India is excluded. 



MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 169 

chances so to do, he calls it an investment of capital on land ; 
thus charging all and crediting nothing to the great machine. 
A further consequence of all this is, that the quantity of the 
machinery of exchange required, in the form of money, is 
large : being considerably more than double the amount, 
per head, that is required in New England, although under 
other circumstances it would be less. 

To add to the stagnation and centralization thus produced, 
the habit of local union among the little communities through- 
out the kingdom is, as far as possible, restrained by law, for 
the benefit of the larger unions in the metropolis ; and for that 
of the larger capitalists, bankers, manufacturers, and traders 
there and in the principal towns. Centralization is the rule. 
The law fixes the manner in which men may be permitted 
to unite for the purposes of trade, and what shaf^be the re- 
lation of the partners towards each other, and towards the 
world : and no effort at self-government can enable the par- 
ties to avoid that law. But recently, the formation of joint- 
stock associations, with transferable shares, was prohibited 
on any terms. Twenty years since, not more than six per- 
sons could associate for opening a place for dealing in 
money, even if all were liable for the debts of the concern : 
and all this was for the benefit of a large association to which 
had been granted exemption from the restrictions imposed by 
previous laws. About that time, however, men were per- 
mitted to associate in larger numbers for the formation of 
banks, but on the sole condition that each associate should 
be liable for all the debts of the concern : thus maintaining 
in full force the barbarous system of unlimited liability : soli- 
darite : that had descended from olden time. The mainte- 
nance of this involved a thousand other regulations, and hence 
arose a necessity for various new laws to determine the re- 
lation of the parties to each other : yet they remain to this day 
in a condition so little satisfactory, that parties who desire to 
associate are forced to resort to various contrivances with a 
view to procure some approach to safety. The necessary 

15 



170 MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 

consequence of all this is, that prudent men take no part in 
such institutions. They deposit their money for safe keep- 
ing, receiving no interest, while the bankers lend out both it 
and their own very Httle capital, and thus are enabled to 
divide double interest. 

The result of all this may be seen by the following 
comparison of the system of Rhode Island, and that of the 
joint-stock banks of London, the great centre of the trade 
of the world. 
The sixty-five banks of Rhode Island have a 

capital of about -------- $10,300,000 

The amount of their investments is usually about 13,000,000 
Their dividends are about six per cent., affording the same 
rate of interest as could be obtained from loans on mortgage 
security, as there is no liability to be paid for. 
The five joint-stock banks of London have a nominal capi- 
tal of - . . . 55,000,000 

Of which there is paid up 11,700,000 

Each shareholder being individually liable for all the 
debts, it is attempted to free him from the responsibility by 
making him and his brother shareholders subscribe for XlOO, 
of which but about .£20 is called in : and thus, instead of 
a capital of a million, we find one amounting to JG200,000, 
while the remaining £800,000 consists of promises to pay ; 
but these promises involve liabilities, for which the givers 
expect to be paid. They, therefore, trade to as great an 
extent as if they had the whole miUion. Their deposits 
amount to about £10,000,000, nearly the whole of which 
vast sum is lent out, liable to be reclaimed whenever any 
change takes place in the state of affairs; and thus while 
the actual capital of the five great banks is little more than 
is found engaged in the money trade of the little State in 
which banking is most free, the amount of their loans 
is four times as great, being probably £11,000,000, — ■ 
$53,000,000. Their dividends are from six to eight per cent., 
in addition to the sums that are appropriated to the increase 



MAN ANL- HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 171 

of their capital : whereas mortgage loans yield but four per' 
cent. Of the depositors, some receive a small interest, and 
some have none, they having thus to contribute towards the 
dividends of the men who take large risks in hopes of re- 
ceiving large profits : of those who prefer the uncertain pro- 
fits of the gaming-table to the certain ones of regular em- 
ployment. Were those banks freed from barbarous liabilities, 
the whole amount of their capitals would be at once paid up, 
as depositors would gladly convert their almost unpro- 
ductive capital into bank shares paying four per cent. To 
yield such dividend would require a business not exceed- 
ing their own means by more than thirty per cent. : and 
their shares would then, because of the perfect safety of the 
institutions and perfect certainty of dividend, constitute a se- 
curity of the highest, order. Were chartered banks once to be 
formed under a general law, it would soon be seen that in- 
stitutions with large capitals and small liabilities were safer 
for their owners, because steadier in their action : and safer 
for those who trade with them : than such institutions as 
those which now exist, and which resemble an inverted 
pyramid, all top and no bottom ; and the latter would soon 
pass out of existence, for no one w^ould trust them.* 

Under such a system, joint-stock banks are held in little 
favour, and private banks abound ; and here we see in full 
force the effect of regulation. We have shown that in 
Rhode Island, out of sixty-five banks, but two failed in 
thirty-eight years, including the periods of war and of the 
great revulsions of 1815, 1825, 1836, and 1839: whereas, in 
England, from 1839 to 1843, both inclusive, a time of pro- 

■ " ' ^ 

* " The year 1836 marked the widest spread and extremity of the 
[joint-stock bank] system, and nothing has since been able to revive it, 
so as to make it a favourite object of public patronage, although, as we 
believe, joint-stock banks were, on the whole, never in so sound and satis- 
factory a condition as they are at this instant of time. This want of 
power to compete for public favour with the other new thing, the railway 
system, is no doubt owing to the unlimited liability of shareholders, in banks, 
and the absence of that obnoxious principle in railways." — Bankers' Circu- 
lar, January 8, 1847. 



172 MAN AND ins STANDARD OF VALUE. 

found peace, eighty-two private bankers became bankrupt ; 
of whom forty-six paid no dividends, twelve paid under 
twenty-five per cent., twelve under fifty per cent., three under 
seventy-five per cent., and two under one hundred per cent. : 
leaving seven yet unascertained. 

Under the one system capital is promptly invested where 
it is accumulated. It falls gently as the dew, and it dif- 
fuses life and animation everywhere around. Every village 
having its money-shop, owned in the neighbourhood, the 
little capitalist is not compelled to send his money to Bos- 
ton, or New York, for investment. The consequence is, 
that every farmer and mechanic who wishes the aid of a 
little capital can have it, provided his character entitles him 
to claim it.* In England, on the contrary, there is a constant 
tendency to the centralization of capital in London, because 
of the diflSculty attendant upon investing it at home. Of the 
3,013 shareholders in the five joint-stock banks of that city, 
1,106 reside at more than fifteen miles from it. The natural 
tendency of capital is to accumulate in towns, and to be 
from thence distributed over the country, equalizing the rate 
of interest to all portions of the nation ; and such would be 
the case in England, were banking free : but the tendency of 
the present system is to force capital from the country to the 
city, and to increase the inequality that w^ould naturally exist. 
It is offered in London at one and a half to two per cent., 
when in parts of the country it is almost unattainable at 
any price. The same state of things exists in many parts 
of the United States. In Pennsylvania, because of the re- 
fusal to permit the establishment of local banks, large sums 

*The little bank of the little town in which we write, with its capital of $50,000, 
has about a hundred and fifty stockholders, embracing all the little capitalists, 
farmers, and lawyers, and widows, and orphans, and tailors, and shoemakers, 
of the neighbourhood. It divides six per cent. — precisely what the borrowers 
pay — 'and its stock is at par. Each owner profits by the local application of 
his capicai, in the increased demand for labour and merchandise that is thereby 
produced: and each participates, through directors with whose characters he 
is acquainted, in the management of his capital. Such institutions produce 
unmixed good : and such would be the character of all were banking once 
set free from the control of politicians. 



MAN AND HIS STANDARD O? VALUE. 173 

are remitted to Philadelphia, to be employed in building up 
great banks : while farmers, and mechanics, and traders, can 
scarcely borrow at any price, because they have no money- 
shop within fifty miles of them. The capitalist receives less 
than he would otherwise do, and his property improves 
slowly, because his neighbours cannot obtain the means to 
improve their own little farms ; to increase their machinery ; 
or to augment their stores of goods. Capital accumulates in 
the city, and the rate of interest falls. Large investments 
are then made in distant banks or railroads, and after a little 
time he finds that his means are gone : that the great banks 
and himself are ruined together. Such is precisely the case 
in England. Capital is forced, by means of regulation, into 
the city, there to be managed by the great bank, and to be 
by it expelled thence to Spain, Mexico, Peru, Chili, In- 
diana, and Illinois ; whereas, had the currency been left to 
take care of itself, and had land and trade been relieved 
from restriction, employment for it would have been found 
at home. There would then never have arisen the necessity for 
threats of interference on the part of the ever-belligerent 
Secretary for Foreign Affairs, to compel the re-payment of 
money which would not have been lent but for the med- 
dling of legislators and politicians w'ith the aflfairs of indi- 
viduals. 

Under such a system, steadiness in the value of the com- 
modity used as the. standard for the measurement of the 
values of commodities, was impossible ; but instead of per- 
ceiving that unsteadiness w^as produced by restriction and 
regulation, it was erroneously attributed to the excess of 
freedom, and a new system w^as established by the celebrated 
Bank Restriction A.ct of 1844. To the movements of the 
one great bank have mainly been due all the violent revul- 
sions in trade throughout the world, whose effects upon the 
United States we have already described. What have been 
the causes of the extraordinary changes that produced 
those revulsions we propose now to show : as well as to in- 

15* 



174 MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 

quire how far the new system tends to prevent their further 
recurrence. 

Under the old charter of the Bank, great inconvenience and 
loss were experienced by the mercantile world from the ex- 
traordinary fluctuations in the supply and value of money. 
At one moment it appeared to be so abundant as to be almost 
valueless. Vast sums remained in bank at the credit of in- 
dividuals, yielding them no return ; and the bank itself was 
soliciting applications for loans, at low rates of interest. It 
was then forced out in loans to all the poor sovereigns of 
Europe. A few months passed by, and the bank was charging 
almost double the usual interest on the best paper, and forcing 
out the securities which it had laboured to monopolize. By 
those who had securities of the first order, money was to be 
obtained with exceeding difficulty; while, by those who held 
such as were of the second order, it was unattainable at any 
price. A little time elapsed, and trade was paralyzed. Mo- 
ney was then again cheap, and it was sent to the mines of 
Mexico ; and then again a little time, and it was dear. Again 
cheap, it was sent to make roads and canals in Illinois, and 
banks in Mississippi and Alabama. Again dear, the bank was 
seen labouring to save itself from ruin, and sauve qui peut 
was the order of the day. 

On the verge of suspension, in 1836, and escaping only by 
ihe adoption of measures that involved in ruin a large por- 
tion of the trading world at home ; it was seen, as early as 
1839, enlarging its loans in the face of a steady drain of bul- 
lion, indicating an already existing excess in the currency, 
and thus involving itself in difficulty so serious as to compel 
resort to measures of severity far exceeding those of the for- 
mer period . Hosts of shopkeepers and mechanics, merchants 
and manufacturers, were ruined; operatives, in countless 
thousands, were deprived of employment and reduced to 
starvation; and the best of the foreign customers of England 
so seriously injured, that for a time trade seemed almost at an 
end. Severe as were these measures, the desired effect was 



MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 175 

not immediately produced; and the great bank, the regulator 
of the monetary concerns of the greatest mercantile commu- 
nity of the world, was seen to be forced, on bended knees, 
to solicit the aid of its great neighbour and rival, the Bank 
of France, to save it from absolute bankruptcy. 

The frequency and extraordinary extent of these changes, 
induced a proper feeling of doubt as to the capacity of those 
to whom had been intrusted the management of the currency ; 
and a strong disposition was felt to ascertain by what laws, 
if any there were, the institution was governed. A Parliamen- 
tary committee was appointed, and numerous sittings were 
held. Witnesses were examined, for and against the bank; 
and a huge volume of evidence was printed, much of which 
was strange enough certainly, as coming from men who 
might have been supposed to know some little of the laws of 
trade. With all the evidence, the committee failed to dis- 
cover the law that was desired. The only conclusion at 
which it was possible for it to arrive was, that the institu- 
tion was administered without reference to any principle 
whatsoever : that its movements were invariably those of mo- 
mentary expediency: and that the dangers and difficulties 
which had occurred were likely to be repeated at the first fa- 
vourable moment. Such having been clearly shown to be 
the case, even by the evidence of the governor of the bank 
himself, it was deemed necessary, on the renewal of the 
charter, to endeavour to subject its action to some certain 
law : thus fitting it to become the regulator of the action 
of others : and hence the Bank Restriction Acts. Those acts 
are not yet three years old, and the same scene is renewed. 
A period of frightful speculation is followed by universal 
panic. Consols, but recently at par, are now at 80. The 
government is forced to pay five per cent, for money. Rail- 
road stock has fallen, in many cases, twenty to thirty per 
cent. The best paper cannot be negotiated at less than ten 
to fifteen per cent, per annum. Bank notes cannot be ob- 
tained even for silver bullion. Dealers in corn, and cotton, 



176 MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 

and bullion, are again proscribed. Deputations from Liver- 
pool and Manchester claim of the minister a suspension of 
the law, and he is assured that large orders remain unexe- 
cuted, because of the impossibility of obtaining the means 
necessary for their execution, while operatives are starving 
for want of employment. The bank itself, with bankruptcy 
staring it in the face, is compelled to enlarge its loans when 
it would contract them ; and thus is exhibited, for the third 
time within little more than ten years, the spectacle of a great 
regulator utterly unable to control its own movements. It 
has hopes, however, in aid from the Russian autocrat. He 
has already saved the regulator of France, and he promises 
to do as much for that of England. The great community 
of Britain see, in the promised aid of two millions, a prospect 
of relief! The bank becomes "more liberal in its dis- 
counts." "The screw" is not so tight. They think they 
see that the regulator may save itself without utterly destroy- 
ing them ; and bright hope gladdens the face of thousands, 
in reflecting upon the idea that the Czar is enabled, by means 
of the issue of bank notes, adapted for the purposes of small 
traders as well as large ones, to dispense with the use of gold 
to such an extent as to enable him to become a creditor of 
their own government ; and to entitle himself to an annual 
remittance of .£60,000, in payment of interest on the pro- 
mised loan : whereas similar action on their own part would 
render available a much larger amount of their own capital, 
free of all demand for interest, thus lessening the cost of the 
machinery of exchange, and increasing the power of pro- 
duction. 

A brief interval of expansion is followed by another con- 
traction. At one moment, interest is reduced to five per cent., 
and at the next it is raised to nine. At one, exchequer bills 
are in favour. At the next, they are proscribed. From hour 
to hour the system changes, and universal ruin is the result. 

Such is the condition of the people of England under the 
control of its great bank. They are dependent upon the 
chance measures of a body of gentlemen, no one of whom 



MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 177 

has ever yet, so far as we have seen, been able to explain the 
principles by which they are governed in the administration 
of the vast machine subjected to their control. 

The Bank Restriction Act has failed to produce the effect 
desired. It has given no steadiness to the value of money. 
By one party, the fault is attributed to the law itself; w^hile 
by another, it is asserted, that if the bank had acted <' in 
the spirit of the law of 1844," the difficuUy would not 
have occurred. Such are the w^ords of the author of the 
law, who attributes the pressure to the extraordinary spirit 
of speculation that has recently existed; to the scarcity of 
corn ; and to other causes : and who, as might have been ex- 
pected, is willing to see it in any cause but the real one, 
which is to be found in the radical defect of his own mea- 
sure. It professed to regulate the action of the bank; and, 
had it done so, the directors would have found themselves 
compelled to act in accordance with its letter and its spirit : and 
then there could have been no such speculation as that we have 
recently witnessed. Had it done so, the difficulties naturally 
attendant upion short crops would not have been aggravated, 
as they now are, by the total prostration of trade, the discharge 
of workmen, and the impossibility of obtaining wages to be 
used in the purchase, at any price, of the necessaries of life. 

The trade in money requires no more law than that in 
shoes. It requires, on the contrary, perfect freedom, be- 
cause it is so vastly greater in amount* that interference to 
the extent of one-half of one per cent, is there more felt than 
in the other would be one amounting to a hundred per cent. 
The tendency of gold and silver to steadiness in value is the 
great recommendation which they possess, entitling them 
to claim to be used for measuring the value of all other 
commodities ; and were the trade in money perfectly free, 

* Every contract for the purchase or sale of any commodity, or property^ 
involves a contract for the delivery of a quantity of money equivalent to the 
price. The trade in money is therefore equal in amount to the sum of the 
prices of all commodities, and properties, and labor, sold. 



178 MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 

they would constitute standards almost as perfect as does the 
yard-stick as a measure of length, or the bushel as a measure 
of capacity. On an average, the whole quantity of corn, and 
cotton, and sugar, in market, in any year, is consumed in the 
year, and a failure of crop may make a change of fifty, 
or even of a hundred, per cent, in the price ; whereas, the 
quantity of gold and silver always in market — and which can 
be kept there because they are not subject to rust, or decay — 
is more than a hundred times the quantity required for a 
year's consumption : and a total failure of the year's crop 
should not affect it to the extent of even one per cent. 
Nevertheless, such are the penalties, prohibitions, liabihties, 
and other restrictions, to which traders in money are sub- 
jected : so numerous and powerful are the monopolies esta- 
blished for their regulation : that of all trades that in money is 
the least steady : and of all commodities, money is the most 
subject to sudden alteration in supply, and consequently in 
value, as compared with other commodities. It is a yard- 
stick, of perpetually changing length : a gallon measure, 
that contains sometimes three quarts, and at other times six, 
or even twelve. The regulation of the currency is held to 
be one of the functions of government, because, in past 
times, all sovereigns have found it to be a convenient mode of 
taxation. Philip the Fair changed the coinage thirteen times 
in a single year, and more than a hundred times during his 
reign. Louis X., Charles IV., Philip V. and VI., John, and 
their successors, almost to the Revolution, followed the illus- 
trious example. In England, similar changes have been 
made, but to a much smaller extent, France having been, at 
all times, distinguished among the countries of Europe for 
frauds of that and other kinds. All the governments of Eu- 
rope, great and small, have, at various times, done the same 
thing ; and hence their claim, still maintained, to execute, 
either by themselves or their deputies, the same profitable 
office. That of England transfers the duty to the bank, 
which institution performs it in such a manner that at one 



MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 179 

time money is cheap, and the State is enabled to compel the 
owners of three and a half per cents, to receive three per 
cents, in exchange, and thus to effect a large saving of inte- 
rest : while at another time money is dear, and the owners 
of the new stock find they have been juggled out of their 
property. We do not desire to say that such is the object 
sought in the production of these extraordinary changes, 
but such is certainly their effect: and good reasons can 
always be given for them. At one time, it is the enormous 
import of stocks from the continent ; at another, the influx 
of South American shares and stocks ; at a third, the vast 
loans to the United States ; and at a fourth, the deficiency 
of the crops ; but stocks would not come if money were not 
made too cheap, and corn might be deficient without pro- 
ducing any material change in the value of money, except 
as regarded corn itself. If the supply of sugar were small, 
the price of sugar itself would rise, and there would be 
somewhat less money to be exchanged against cloth, the 
price of which would slightly fall ; and so, if the supply of 
grain were short, there would be less money to be exchanged 
against sugar ; but in no case would a deficiency in one 
commodity materially affect the prices of other commodities, 
were the currency let alone. The true reason is, that the 
task of regulation is committed to one great institution, 
w^hose movements are totally unregulated. It monopolizes 
securities at one time, and produces an apparent excess, and 
consequent cheapness, of money. It forces them back upon 
the market, when much of this apparent excess has found 
employment in new enterprises, to which resort would not 
otherwise have been had, and now the scarcity is equal to 
the previous abundance. It is a great fly-wheel in the midst 
of an infinite number of little wheels, all of which are com- 
pelled to go fast or slow as the master- wheel may direct. If 
its own movement could be rendered uniform, all would work 
harmoniously ; but if it must continue to be, as it has here- 
tofore been, subjected to perpetual jerks, and to changes from 



180 MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 

backward to forward motion, and vice versa, from forward to 
backward, the inevitable consequence must also continue to be 
the destruction of many of the little ones : and eventually, per- 
haps, it may be that of the great one. These little wheels are 
the bankers, and merchants, and manufacturers of England : 
of the United States: and of the world: who have been for a 
long time engaged in studying the law which governs the 
motion of the great fiy-w^heel, but with so little success, as 
yet, that we hazard little in asserting that there is no man in 
England, in or out of the bank, that would commit that law 
to writing, and stake his fortune on proving that it had been 
operative during any one period of twelve months in the last 
twenty years. In despair of arriving at any comprehension 
of the laws of its action, all resign themselves blindly to its 
influence, and the error of the great regulator is propagated 
throughout the w^hole system. Joint stock and private banks 
expand when it expands, and contract as it contracts ; and an 
error of a single million in Threadneedle-street thus pro- 
duces error to the extent of tens of millions in the money 
transactions of the kingdom. Hence the necessity for sub- 
jecting it to fixed and positive rules. The currency needs 
no such regulator, but if such an one must continue to exist, 
its action should be rendered perfectly automatic : leaving it 
then to the proprietors of the little wheels to use such gear- 
ing as w^ould enable them to attain as much or as little speed 
as they might respectively require. It should be acted upon 
by the community, instead of acting itself upon them, and 
then it might be consulted wdth the same confidence as the 
thermometer. The law that should produce this effect, 
would not be that of 1844, which, with all its machinery of 
banking department, and department of issue, has totally 
failed to answer the end proposed. It has failed, because it 
was framed with a view to changes in the amount of currency 
in use, which are ever slow^, and small in amount: while it 
contained no reference to changes in the currency seeking 
employment, which have always been rapid, and great in 



MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 181 

amount.* It made the bullion of the bank dependent upon 
the circulation which is in constant use among the great body 
of the people, and cannot be materiall}' increased or de- 
creased, without a great change in the state of trade, or in 



* It is curious to see in the evidence of eminent bankers the reasons ad- 
duced for thinking that deposits — convertible on the instant into notes or 
gold — are not as much currency as notes or gold themselves. One among 
the most learned of the bank directors, thought that they could not be so 
considered, for the owner " could not pay his laborers with them," nor could 
he do with them '" whatever he could do with sovereigns and shillings." He 
thought, however, that they possessed " the essential qualities of money in a 
very low degree." The " essential quality of money" is that of facilitating 
the transfer of property, and that quality is possessed in a higher degree by 
the bank note than by gold and silver; and in a still higher degree by the 
check than by the note : for the owner of money on deposit draws for the 
precise number of pounds, shillings, and pence required, and transfers them, 
without the trouble of handling or counting even a single penny. It is 
curious, too, to remark the strong tendency existing in the minds of many of 
the witnesses, distinguished in the monetary circles of London, to confound 
notes of hand, and bills, with currency. A note is a contract for the delivery, 
at some future day, of a given quantity of money, or currency. Its value, in 
money, depends on the proportion between the money and bills -in market, 
and is just as much liable to variation as that of sugar or coffee. If money 
be plenty, and bills, or coffee, or sugar scarce, the price of the article in which 
the deficiency of supply exists, will be high ; but if sugar, or coffee, or bills, be 
abundant, and money be scarce, the price of the superabundant commodity 
will be low. Notes may be barlered for merchandise, as is done in England 
to a great extent; but an increase in the supply of notes in the market, 
although it may materially affect the credit price of commodities : or the price 
in barter for promises to deliver money at some future day : will make no 
change in their money prices, unless there exist a facility for converting the 
notes into money. In time of severe pressure, there is great facility in bar- 
tering merchandise for notes; but want of confidence induces the holders to 
fix the prices very high, with a view to cover the cost and risk attendant upon 
the conversion of notes into the commodity that is needed, which is money, 
or currency : the thing with which they must redeem their own obligations. 
The term currency means money on the spot, and in England, with the excep- 
tion of the silver coinage for small payments, nothing is recognised as money 
but gold, which passes from hand to hand, either by actual delivery of the 
coin, or by the transfer of the property in a certain portion of that which 
exists in the vaults of banks and bankers: by means of private drafts, or checks, 
or by that of obligations of the bank itself, called bank notes. A contract for 
the delivery of flour at a future day might, with the same propriety, be called 
flour, as a contract for the delivery, at a future day, of a certain quantity of 
the commodity which is current for the payment of debts, and which we call 
money, can be called money, or currency, itself. 

The difficulties of the bank result from the fact that, whenever speculation 

16 



182 MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 

the feelings of the people ; instiead of making it dependent 
upon the deposits of unemployed capital, the property of the 
few, which are liable to increase or decrease by every change 
of weather, and by every speck that appears in the political 
or commercial horizon. 

By the new charter, the quantity of bullion to be held is 
made dependent entirely on the state of the circulation ; a 
sovereign, or, to a certain extent, its equivalent in silver, 
being required to lie in the vaults of the bank for every 
pound of its notes that is in the hands of the public beyond 
the sum of ^£14,000,000. An examination of the operations of 
the bank, shows the circulation an almost constant quantity, 
amounting, since the date of that charter, to ^£20,000,000 ; 
and so long as the public shall insist upon keeping it at 
that point, <£6,000,000 of bulHon must remain in the bank, 
not to be used under any circumstances whatsoever : and 
of little more value to the community, while they so remain, 
than would be an equal weight of pebble stones. How far 
the circulation can claim to be treated as a constant quan- 
tity, we propose now to inquire. In doing so, it is neces- 
sary to bear in mind that trade is more active at certain 
seasons of the year than at others; and that, as more ex- 
changes are to be performed, more notes, or machinery of 
exchange, are required in the active than in the dull sea- 
son ; and that, therefore, if we would compare one year with 
another, we should take, in all cases, the same months of the 

is rife, and men are anxious to make contracts for the future delivery of money, 
she facilitates their operations by taking their notes freely, and becoming re- 
sponsible for the delivery of the money on demand: by which means her debts, 
called deposits, are largely increased. If she has the money, all is well ; but 
if she has not, she thus swells the imaginary amount of the currency, and 
prices rise. When the time arrives for payment, it commonly proves that 
both parties have been trading on their credit. The bank must be paid, or 
she cannot pay, and must become bankrupt. She seduced the poor debtor to 
over-trade, by assuming to do that which she could not have done if called 
upon . and she now ruins him for having yielded to her solicitations. She 
escapes by lucky accident, and speedily re-exhibits what is called "an in- 
creased liberality" in her accommodations; i. c, she again runs largely in 
debt for the purchase of securities. 



MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 183 

year. Following this rule, we now give the circulation of 
April and October, for the years from 1832 to 1840 : — 

April. October. 

1833 - - - £18,449,000 - - £18,200,000 

1833 - - - 17,912,000 - - - 19,823,000 

1834 - - - 19,097,000 - - 19,107,000 

1835 - - - 18,507,000 - - - 18,216,000 

1836 - - - 17,985,000 - - 18,136,000 

1837 - - - 18,365,000 - - - 18,876,000 

1838 - - - 18,872,000 - - 19,636,000 

1839 - - - 18,326,000 - - - 17,906,000 

1840 - - - 16,818,000 - - 17,221,000 

The year 1840 was a year of utter prostration. In that 
and the following year, trade was at an end, so far as the 
ruin of the customers of England: and particularly the peo- 
ple of the United States: by the extraordinary movements 
of the bank could accomplish that object. Nevertheless, 
under these untoward circumstances, the circulation re- 
mained above ^616, 000,000 ; and we shall now find it gra- 
dually attaining a point higher than it had been at for 
many years : — 

April. October. 

1841 - - - £16,533,700 - - £17,592,000 

1842 - - - 16,952,000 - - - 20,004,000 

1843 - - - 20,239,000 - - 19,561,000 

1844 - - - 21,246,000 - 

NEW LAW. 

April. October. 

1844 £21,152,000 

1845 - - £20,099,000 - - - 21,260,000 

1846 - - - 19,86.5,000 - - 21,550,000 

1847 - - - 19,854,000 - - - 

From this we see that in the first period embracing the 
nine years from 1832 to 1840, both inclusive: and including 
the crisis of 1836-7 : the variation in the month of April, above 
and below the medium point of .£18,500,000, is under three 
per cent.; while that of October, above and below the point 
of ^18,900,000, is but little over four per cent, until we 
reach the close of 1839, and commencement of 1840; when 
the bank had been compelled to trample in the dust all 



184 MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 

that were in any way dependent upon it, thereby almost an- 
nihilating the trade of the country, and that of all countries 
intimately connected with it. 

In the second period, it attains a higher point than in the 
first. Private and joint-stock banks have been ruined by 
the extraordinary revulsion of 1839, and confidence in their 
notes has been impaired: and the bank now profits by the 
ruin which it has caused. 

From 1844 to the present time, the variations are under 
two per cent. There is, however, a material difference be- 
tween the average amount of the first and third periods, and 
a permanent increase appears to have taken place. In the 
time that has elapsed, there has been a great increase of 
population, wealth, and trade, and an increase of the ma- 
chinery of trade might have been calculated upon ; yet no 
real increase in the circulation has taken place, and the 
change that is above shown is only apparent, and offers a 
new proof of the tendency to constancy: despite all legisla- 
tive interferences : to which we desire to call the attention 
of our readers. Previously to 1844, there were no limits to 
the circulation of the private, joint stock, Irish and Scotch 
banks, which averaged, between 1833 and 1839, about 
c£20,000,000. By the new law, they were limited to about 
jEl 7,800,000, which is almost the precise amount at the 
date of the latest returns. The vacuum thus made had to 
be filled by notes of the Bank of England, which have, 
therefore, risen from ^£18,000,000 to ^620,000,000. The 
average of the total circulation from 1833 to 1839 was 
^£37,838,000; in January last, it had reached j£39,400,000 ; 
in April, it was .£37,819,000. 

Small even as are these variations, they are still to a con- 
siderable extent only apparent. It is well known that when 
money is very plenty and cheap, bankers and banks retain 
on hand a larger amount of each others' notes than when it 
is scarce and high ; and a note in their vaults is just as 
much out of circulation as if it remained in those of the issu- 



MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 185 

ing bank itself. In the above table it is shown that the 
highest April was that of 1835, when the bullion in the bank 
was .£10,673,000, the securities -below £26,000,000, and 
the market value of money but three per cent. The highest 
October was that of 1833, when the bullion was nearly 
£11,000,000, the securities £24,000,000, and the rate of 
interest also but three per cent. It was a period of reco- 
very from recent excitement that had been followed by de- 
pression and loss. The next highest October was that of 
1838, when trade was paralyzed: unemployed capital abun- 
dant: the stock of bullion near £10,000,000 : and the rate of 
interest three per cent. In 1842-3-4, the apparent circula- 
tion was greater than in any of the years of the first period, 
yet the bank was unable to extend its business, which was 
scarcely equal to the amount of its circulation and surplus. 
In all these cases we find precisely the circumstances calcu- 
lated to produce an accumulation of Bank of England notes 
in the vaults and chests of private and joint-stock bankers : 
while the lowest April and October, until w^e reach the total 
prostration of 1839-40, were those of 1836, when the loans 
of the bank had reached the highest point, and when, ac- 
cording to the theory of the bank restriction act, the circula- 
tion should have been highest. 

Under the new law, the highest April was that of 1845, 
when the bullion had reached the enormous sum of 
£;i6,000,000 ; and the highest October, that of 1846, w^hen 
it had just re-attained that amount. In view of these facts, 
we doubt if the variation above or below the medium point, 
in the real circulation, from 1833 to 1839, ever equalled 
one and a half per cent. ; a proportion so small, that for 
almost all purposes it may be regarded as being a constant 
quantity.* 



* " We have shown, by unanswerable arguments, that under no circum- 
stances will more circulation be retained in the hands of the public than is 
just sufficient to perform the functions of a medium of exchange for the inter- 
nal transactions of the country. No man retains more money in his possession 

16* 



186 MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 

That such has been the case, has not been due to any 
efforts of the bank for that purpose. On the contrary, none 
have been spared that could have tended to increase and 
decrease the amount. Between 1833 and 1839, it increased 
its securities from .£22,000,000 to .£31,000,000, and thus 
forced up the amount of unemployed capital at the credit 
of its customers, from £8,000,000 to £18,000,000, for all 
of which they were entitled to demand notes ^ if they would ; 
and it had diminished its investments from <£3 1,000,000 to 
£21,000,000, thereby enabling the owners of unemployed 
capital to invest at low prices, the effect of which was shown 
in the reduction of deposits from £18,000,000 to £7,000,000 ; 
yet the circulation neither increased nor decreased materially. 
Under the new law, we find it purchasing securities and 
contracting debts, until the former rise from £22,000,000 to 
£^36,000,000, and the latter from £12,000,000 attain to 
^24,000,000 : and again diminishing, the first to £25,000,000, 
and the second to £16,000,000 : and all this with no change 
worth notice in the circulation. The transactions of the 
whole period have shown that scarcely any power can be 
exercised over it, for its increase or decrease ; and yet this 
almost invariable quantity is made the measure of the bullion 
to be retained in the vaults of the bank : the result of all which 
is, that it has a circulation of ^£20,000,000 that it cannot 
compel the people to return upon it for redemption, and that 
it is, nevertheless, obliged to keep £6,000,000 out of these 
£20,000,000, in bullion ; while the whole commercial com- 
munity is thrown into an agony of despair by the total 
refusal of accommodation, because the amount of bullion 
is reduced to £9,000,000. Had the law provided that 
£3,000,000 should be packed up and stowed away, never 



than he requires for immediate use, but either places it in a banlc, or employs 
it in the purchase of commodities on which he expects to obtain a profit, or 
securities which will yield an interest. As a rule, therefore, the circulation is 
at all times confined to the lowest sum which is sufficient to conduct the trans- 
actions of the country." — Economist. 



MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 187 

again to be opened or removed for any purpose whatsoever, 
it would have been quite as useful for the maintenance of 
any thing like equality in the value of money ; and far more 
useful in that it would not have lulled the people into a be- 
lief that safeguards had been provided, when safety there 
could be none. It may be said, however, that panics might 
arise when people would bring the notes for redemption. 
Panics follow violent changes of action, like those of 1825, 
1836, and 1839, by which great losses are produced, threat- 
ening the existence of the bank ; and nothing could be bet- 
ter calculated to produce them than the institution of a sys- 
tem that professed to afford security when it gave none. 
The directors thought they were safe if they obeyed the 
law, and the people relied on the law for security. It has 
been obeyed : yet security to bank or individuals has not 
been attained, nor can it ever be by aid of that law. 

The power and the discretion of the people : their capa- 
city for self-government : in regard to the regulation of the 
circulation, have been fully manifested. They want no aid 
from the law, which is just as useful as if its object had been 
to fix the number of shoes, hats, or coats, that should be kept 
by the manufacturers of those commodities ; with a view to 
provide against any man claiming to purchase a hat, and 
not being able to find one. Should such an one ever be 
passed, many men will be found going without hats, shoes, or 
coats ; for the supply of those articles, whenever it shall 
come to be regulated, will be as unsteady, and their prices 
will become as variable, as we now see to be the case with 
money. The people do require, however, protection against 
the exercise, by the bank, of the vast power confided to it, 
by means of which it is enabled to purchase securities, pass- 
ing the amount to the credit of their owners, and calling 
them <« deposits:" by which operation prices are forced up, 
the rate of interest is diminished, capital is made to appear 
superabundant, and a speculative disposition is produced. 
That institution has a monopoly of the power of trading as 



188 MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 

a banking corporation. Had it not, the persons, whose capi- 
tal is there locked up, unproductive to themselves, while the 
bank is increasing the amount of its securities with a view 
to the making of large dividends ; might demand bullion for 
their deposits, and open banks themselves, lending out their 
own money for their own profit, and thus curbing the bank : 
but this they could not do, prior to 1844, because every as- 
sociation for banking purposes was subjected to heavy penal- 
ties, in the form of liabilities, which forbade that any pru- 
dent man should take part in their formation ; and since the 
new law, the formation of them, even coupled with the prin- 
ciple of unlimited liability, requires permission from the go- 
vernment : and as if utterly to prevent people of small means 
from taking part in them, the price of a share is fixed at a hun- 
dred pounds, of which one-half must be paid in. Thus is re- 
striction loaded on restriction, to produce steadiness ! The 
effect is similar to that which would be obtained by adding a 
ton of iron to the top hamper of an already overloaded coach. 
For the benefit of those who have not traced the operation 
of an expansion, we propose to show the manner in which 
it acts. Let us suppose, first, a state of affairs, in which 
every thing is at par. Money is easily obtained for good 
notes, at a fair rate of discount, and for mortgages, at the 
usual rate of interest ; while all those who have disposable 
capital, can readily obtain good securities that will yield them 
the common rate of profit ; the daily supply of money and 
securities being about equal the one to the other. In this 
happy state of affairs, the directors of the bank, feeling 
themselves very easy, fancy that it would be profitable to 
take another million, and forthwith their broker is desired to 
purchase that amount of exchequer bills, or other securities. 
At once the equilibrium is disturbed. A demand for securi- 
ties exists, exceeding the ordinary amount of supply. Prices 
rise, and some unhappy holder is tempted to sell, in the hope 
that there will be less demand to-morrow, and that then prices 
will fall, and he may buy in again with a fair profit. At 



MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 189 

the close of the day, his bills have become the property of 
the bank, and he : or all those who have united to furnish the 
the desired million : is creditor to the bank, either directly 
or through his banker, for the whole amount. His capital is 
now uninvested, and he appears in the market on the next day 
as a purchaser. Unfortunately for him, however, the bank, 
too, makes its appearance, for the second time, in the same 
capacity. The first experiment has been attended with vastly 
fortunate results. Its " deposits" have grown with the in- 
crease of its investments. Such success emboldens it to re- 
peat the operation, and another million is purchased, with 
similar results. It obtains the bills, and the owners obtain 
credits on the books of the bank, which thus runs in debt, and 
the more debt it contracts, the more means it appears to sup- 
pose itself to have at command. With the second million, 
prices have risen ; and with the third, they rise still higher ; 
and so on wdth each successive million. Capital appears 
superabundant, because the former owner of these mil- 
lions of securities is seeking for profitable investments ; 
when the real superabundance consists only in debts which 
the bank has incurred. Prices advance from day to day, 
and a speculative disposition is engendered by the growth of 
fortune among the holders of stocks, and next it becomes 
necessary to manufacture new stocks for the purpose of em- 
ploying this vast surplus capital. New railroads are there- 
fore projected and subscribed for : vast contracts are made : 
boundless prosperity is in view. Men who should be raising 
corn, are breaking up the old roads to replace them with 
new, or building palaces for the lucky speculators. Im- 
mense orders for iron, and bricks, and timber, are given. 
Prices advance. England becomes a good place to sell in, 
and a bad one to buy in. Imports increase, and exports de- 
crease. Bullion goes abroad. The bank has to sell securi- 
ties. Prices fall. Business is paralyzed. The roads are half 
made, and cannot be completed. The people are ruined, 
and the bank escapes with difficulty from the ruin she 



190 MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 

herself has made, congratulates herself on the dexterity she 
has shown, and prepares to repeat the operation at the first 
opportunity. Such is the history of 1825, 1836, and 1839, 
at all of which periods, the bank manufactured " deposits" 
by monopolizing securities, and was then itself misled into 
the belief that the increase of its own debts indicated an 
actual surplus of capital. Whenever that institution pur- 
chases a security : which is always the representative of some 
already existing investment : the person from whom it is pur- 
chased will unquestionably use the means that are placed at 
his command for the creation of some new species of in- 
vestment, as no man willingly permits his capital to lie 
idle. If it make this purchase with the money of others, 
the inevitable effect must be to raise prices, and stimulate 
the late owner to increased activity to provide the new in- 
vestment ; and whenever it shall be provided, he will, either 
directly or indirectly, demand payment in gold, and then the 
security must be parted with to provide means for the pay- 
ment ; at which time prices will as inevitably fall, because 
the creditor of the bank has been labouring to invest capital 
which had no real existence in any other form than that of a 
railroad, or canal, or some other public work, or debt, al- 
ready created, and which could not be used for the forma- 
tion of other roads or canals : — and thus, while the one 
party has been trying to invest his funds, the other has been 
holding the evidence of their being already invested, and 
drawing interest for their use. A double action has thus 
been produced, causing inflation and speculation to be fol- 
lowed by panic and ruin. 

The course of the bank, in the late railroad speculation, 
appears to have been precisely the same as was, in the 
great land speculation of 1836, that of the banks of the west, 
established among a scattered people who still cultivated poor 
lands : and who borrowed money to make the banks. A 
man purchased a section of land, and paid the amount to 
the treasurer. The treasurer deposited the money in the 



MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 191 

bank. The bank lent the man his money, on his note. He 
paid it again to the treasurer, who again deposited it in the 
bank, which again lent it to the original owner, who again 
bought land, and again paid the treasurer, repeating the 
operation until, with a single thousand dollars, he became 
the owner of tens of thousands of acres. At the end of the 
operation, the government had parted with vast bodies of 
land, and had, in exchange, a vast amount of bank credits : 
and the bank held the notes of the speculator. 

For a series of years, every species of difficulty had been 
thrown in the way of those who desired to make roads, the 
effect of which had been to cause an unnatural accumulation 
of uninvested capital : to lower the price of money : and to 
produce enormous speculation in railroads to he made. All 
England was engaged in it, from the highest peer to the 
smallest shopkeeper ; for the desire of gain by speculation is 
always in the direct ratio of the difficulty of obtaining a liv- 
ing by honest industry. It is universal in France : and far 
greater and more universal in England than in the United 
States.* The consequence was, that early in the last year a 
large amount of money was required to be paid for deposits 
on account of roads for which charters were to be obtained. 
The difficulty was supposed to consist not in the matter of 
capital, but in the manner of payment. All the bullion in 
the bank would not accomplish it. The very fact of the 
vast sum required in that early stage of the business should 
have been sufficient to induce great doubt of the propriety 
of the operation, and had the bank not interfered, very many 
doubtful speculations would have fallen to the ground. 
Ever ready, however, to foster a speculative tendency, she 



* In France, speculation in stocks by women in high life is a matter of 
daily occurrence. In England, it is less frequent, but it does occur : as the 
papers of the clay furnish ample evidence. In both countries, ladies make 
bets on the results of horse-races : small ones, it is true, but small as they 
are, they are evidence of the speculative tendency. In the United States, 
such thia2;s ar.^, unknown. 



192 MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 

was not found wanting on this occasion. She took the 
money, and lent it out as fast as paid in ; and thus enabled 
the same thousand pounds to pay the deposits on thousands 
of shares, precisely as did the western banks with the funds 
of the land speculator. In the latter case, there was one 
advantage, which the railroad speculation did not possess. 
No further payments were there to be required ; whereas, 
here, the loan was only to facilitate the first payment, which 
was to be followed by an almost endless series of instalments. 
In February, 1846, the bank had become debtor to its depo- 
sitors — the principal of whom was the accountant w^ho re- 
ceived those deposits, or, in other words, a state treasurer 
—.£18,000,000, and it held ^636,000,000 of securities, 
^£23,000,000 of which were private ; and thus it had afforded 
to the railroad speculators of England precisely the same faci- 
lity that the western banks granted to the land speculators of 
their respective vicinities. Had no such interference taken 
place, and had subscribers to roads been compelled, as they 
should have been, to find money instead of giving notes ; 
thus affording evidence of the existence of the capital re- 
quired ; many ruinous schemes would have been crushed in 
the outset : fewer persons would have been employed in 
building roads, and more would have been engaged in culti- 
vation : prices would not have been so high : more manu- 
factures would have been exported : and the corn required 
to make amends for deficient crops would have been less in 
quantity, and paid for with manufactures, or with bullion, 
that might have been spared without causing the sHghtesI 
disturbance in the monetary world of Britain : but the pro 
prietors of the bank would have received no bonus, in addi 
tion to their usual half-yearly dividend, the object sought for 
in fostering speculation.* 



* So long as the bank lent out the means which properly belonged to it, 
as was the case throughout a large portion of 1845, manufactures were ex- 
ported with profit ; and they continued to be so until the expansion had fii 



MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 193 

Among the assets of the bank are three quantities that may 
be regarded as constants. These are — 

1. The rest, or surplus capital - - - - £4,000,000 

3. The circulation ----- 20,000,000 

3. The pubhc deposits, to the extent of - - - 2,500,000 

Total ------ £26,500,000 

With all the excitement of the last two years, the ave- 
rage amount of securities held by the bank, is but about 
.£30,000,000. That excitement has been produced by using 
the capital of others, placed in her hands, while those others 
were trying to use it themselves. Had the law limited her 
to the use of the above items, which may be regarded as 
almost the same as her own capital, and by the use of which 
she interferes with nobody: and had the amount of her 
securities never exceeded the sum of those quantities : no 
excitement could ever have been produced ; no panic could 
ever have followed ; vast losses would have been avoided ; 
bank stock would not have fallen, in two months, from 205 
to 189 ; and England would now be in the enjoyment of high 
prosperity, notwithstanding the failure of her crops. 

During the period from 1832 to 1839, the amount of those 
items varied but little from £23,000,000. We will now 
show the state of the securities of the bank, taking that sum 
as a par, and marking as plus +, or minus — , the varia- 
tions that occurred, with their effects. In November, 1831, 
securities had been greatly in excess, and there was consider- 
able speculation. In January, the bank was reducing her 



time to produce the effect of making England a good place to sell in, and a 
bad one to buy in. We take the following from the Bankers' Circular of 
March 19, before the crisis had arrived. After stating that, for about two 
years after the passage of the Charter Act, manufacturers had been able to 
sell to advantage, while the prices of imports were not remunerative, the 
writer goes on to say, that " no manufactures exported, and none sold at home, 
have left a fair profit to the manufacturer since July last; on the other hand, 
almost all the imported commodities, above enumerated, (cotton, silk, hemp, 
tobacco and indigo, coffee and sugar,) except silk, have risen in value, and 
yielded a fair profit to the importer." 

2B 17 



194 



MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 



scarce, and worth on first-rate bills 

Bullion going abroad. Excitement diminish- 
ing. Interest 3;^ per cent.j- 

Red action. Great losses in trade. Little 
demand for money. Interest 3 per cent. 

Trade paralyzed. No demand for money. 
Interest 2| per cent. Bank again ex- 
tending itself, and forcing up the amount 
of unemployed capital left with it on de- 
posit. 

No demand for money. Bullion and de- 
posits increasing. Continued paralysis. 
Interest 2f per cent. 

Bank monopolizing securities, and thus in- 
creasing the deposits. No demand for 
money. Interest 25- per cent. 

Deposits fall with the diminution of securities 
held by the bank, and capitalists now ob- 
tain 2| per cent. 

Business reviving. Increased demand for 
money. Rate 3 per cent. Bank has 
bought £1,200,000 of additional securities, 
and the unemployed capital has conse- 
quently advanced £1,000,000. 

Bank has diminished securities, and deposits 
have fallen therewith. Interest is now 
3^ per cent. ; showing an increased demand 
for money, and increased facility for invest- 
ment, with the diminution of bank securi- 
ties. 

Great expansion, producing increase of de- 
posits. Interest has consequently fallen to 
3 per cent. Tendency to purchase foreign 
securities, as those of England are being 
monopolized by the bank. 

Further expansion. Increase of deposits. 
Foreign stocks remitted to England for 
the absorption of the large apparent sur- 
plus capital. Bullion going abroad. In- 
terest 3^ per cent. 

* The perpetual jerks to which this great concern has always been liable, 
are well shown in the few months prior to April, 1832 — In August, 1831, the 
securities were £25,900,000 ; in October they had fallen to £20,750,000 ; in 
November they had risen to £24,450,000. In February, 1832, they were 
£25,550,000 ; in April £21,900,000. With such a fly-wheel, the only won- 
der is that any of the little wheels escape destruction. 

+ The rates of interest here given, have reference to first class paper in 
London. 



loans, and money was 

4 per cent.* 

1832— April + £1,300,000. 

July -}- 600,000. 

Oct. + 1,000,000. 



1833— Jan. -f 200,000. 

April 4- 1,300,000. 

July Par. 

Oct. + 1,200,000. 

1833— Dec. -f 500,000. 



1834— April -f 2,600,000. 



July 4- 4,600,000. 



MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 195 

1834 — Oct. + £5,600,000. Further expansion. Prices rise. More 

stocks imported,* and more bullion going 
abroad. High profits of speculators have 
raised the rate of interest to 3f per cent. 

Dec. -j- 3,200,000. Reduction. Deposits diminishing, and price 

of money maintained. Bullion going 
abroad. 
1S35 — April-}- 3,500,000. Increase. Deposits rising, and bullion still 

in demand. Interest still 3 J per cent. 

July _|_ 2,700,000. Reduction. Deposits falling therewith. Bul- 
lion still in demand. Money less abund- 
ant for speculation, and interest 4 per 
cent. 

Oct. -}- 5,000,000. Great increase of securities and of deposits. 

American stocks coming to absorb the 
great surplus capital. Great speculation. 
Interest 3| per cent. 

Dec. -j- 8,700,000. Great increase of deposits, and heavy import 

of stocks. Large contracts for present and 
future payments thereon. Great specula- 
tion, and interest 3^ per cent. 
1836 — April -j- 5,400,000. Reduction of securities and of deposits. In- 
terest still 3| per cent. 

July -|- 4,150,000. Reduction of securities and of deposits. 

Money much wanted for payments on 
contracts for stocks, and interest rises to 
4 per cent. 

Oct. -f- 6,300,000. Increased securities. Large payments for 

foreign stocks.j- Export of bullion. Great 
distress. Interest 5 per cent. Crushing of 
American merchants. 

Dec. -\- 6,600,000. Distress greatly aggravated. Bank forced to 

expand in the face of diminishing bullion. 
Interest 5^ per cent. 
1837 — April -|- 6,300,000. Bank, having lost all command of its own ac- 
tions, is still obliged to keep itself expanded. 
Continued export of bullion. Distress 
continues. Interest 5| per cent. 

July- -j- 4,000,000. Bank enabled at length to contract its busi- 
ness. Small return of bullion. Distress 
somewhat diminished. Interest 4J per 
cent. No confidence. 



* "From November, 1834, to March, 1835, there was an enormous specu- 
lation in the prices of South American stocks, which caused an advance to a 
great extent, and brought a large import of foreign stock from all parts of the 
continent." — Blr. J. H. Palmer, Beport on Banks of Issue, p. 106. 

■{- « The loss of bullion by the bank, between 1st of April and 1st of Septem- 
ber, 1836, I believe to have been occasioned by the excess in the American 
securities." — Ibid. p. 115. 



196 



MAN AND Ills STANDARD OF VALUE. 



1837— Oct. -f £3,500,000. 



Dec. -f 600,000. 



1838— April — 200,000. 



July — 650,000. 



Oct. — 200,000. 



1838— Dec. — 2,000,000. 



1839— April 



Par. 



July 4- 900,000. 



Oct. + 2,860,000. 



Dec. — 500,000. 



1840— April -f 100,000. 

July — 600,000. 

Oct. — 200,000. 

Dec. — 600,000. 



(continued contraction. Trade very dull. 
Deposits and bullion increasing. No con- 
fidence. Interest 3-^ per cent. 

Great reduction. Trade very dull. Large im- 
ports of bullion. Interest still 3 J per cent., 
notwithstanding the heavy amount of depo- 
sits, because of continued want of confidence. 

Decrease of securities, with constant increase 
of unemployed capital, and of deposits of bul- 
lion. Trade paralyzed. Interest 2^ per cent. 

Diminution of securities. Bank exports bul- 
lion, having no demand for money at home. 
Trade very dull. Interest 3 per cent. 

Small increase of securities. Trade slowly 
reviving. Import of bullion at an end. 
Interest 3 per cent. 

Great diminution of securities and of deposits. 
Amount of unemployed capital still large, 
and American stocks coming for sale. In- 
terest, however, rises to 3^ per cent. 

Increase of securities, paid for with bullion, 
which falls to £7,000,000. Import of Ameri- 
can stocks, and interest rises to 3| per cent. 

Increase of securities. Heavy payments for 
foreign stocks. Great diminution of de- 
posits. Heavy drain of bullion. Severe 
distress. Interest 5^ per cent. 

Large increase of securities in the face of 
heavy drains of bullion. Bank unmanage- 
able. On the verge of ruin. Interest 6^ 
per cent. Soon after, forced to apply to 
the bank of France for aid. 

Bank escapes bankruptcy. People ruined. 
Business at an end. Extreme distress. 
Interest 6^ per cent. 

During the whole of this year, trade continues 
prostrate. Money is scarce and high, in- 
terest being about 5 per cent, on the best 
paper, while on second rate, it can scarcely 
be obtained at any price : yet the bank is 
totally unable to aiford relief. The ruin 
of trade has diminished her circulation and 
that of all other banks. Deposits are 
smaller, and the bullion tends rather to 
diminish than to increase, because she has 
ruined the people of the United States, 
Canada, India, and others of the best cus- 
tomers of England, who are no longer able 
to be purchasers of manufactured goods. 
Distress is universal abroad, and poverty 
and starvation equally so at home. 



MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 197 

1841 — •April — £700,000. Presents precisely the same features as 1840. 

July — 700,000. The bank, always able to promote specu- 

Oct. -\- 400,000. lation and to produce ruin, is now, as 

Dec. ■ — 200,000. always before, utterly unable to afford aid. 

There is no confidence. Interest is about 
5 per cent, for the best paper, and enor- 
mously high for any but the best. The 
few grow rich upon large interest, and the 
many are ruined. 

With 1842, the circulation of the bank rises to 
.£19,500,000, which, added to "the rest," and ^£2,500,000 
of public deposits, would give a trading capital of nearly 
^£25,000,000, which may be taken as the par, but there is 
no demand for money. The nation is paralyzed, because 
its customers have been ruined. 

1842— Oct. — £2,500,000. During this period, the bullion grows from 

£9,000,000 to £16,000,000, and interest 
falls from 3 to If per cent. The bank is 
unable to use its own means, even at the 
lowest rate of interest ; and she now loses 
all that she had gained by over-trading and 
high interest, in the previous years, and 
more. Had her loans remained steadily at 
par, she would have exhibited a larger 
amount of " rest," than she was able to do 
after all her exertions; while the nation 
would have saved the vast sum that was 
forced abroad and lost. 

Throughout the whole of this calamitous period, no diffi- 
culty existed but that which the bank itself had made. It 
forced capital to seek investment abroad, by monopolizing 
securities at home ; whereas, had it confined its investments 
to the amount of its permanent means, retaining, in the form 
of bullion, the capital of others intrusted to its care, increas- 
ing or decreasing in amount, as its customers thought fit to 
deposit or to recall it ; the lohole business of the institution 
would have been regulated by the community, it being itself 
a perfectly automatic machine. While the amount of its se- 
curities was determined by the quantity of circulation in use, 
the amount of its bullion would have been determined by the 

17* 



Dec. — 


4,500,000 


1843-'April — 


1,400,000 


July — 


3,500,000 


Oct. — 


2,800,000 


Dec. — 


4,000,000 


1844— April — 


2,800,000 


July — 


2,500,000 


Aug. — 


2,000,000 



198 MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 

deposits of capital not in use ; and they, like the circulation, 
would have been nearly a constant quantity, fluctuating, per- 
haps, between six and eight millions, instead of rising to 
eighteen, and falling to six millions.* 

We will now briefly show the working of the proposed 
system. Let us suppose that, on a given day, the bank has 
a circulation of .£20,000,000, for which she holds securities : 
and deposits to the amount of £10,000,000, for which she 
has bullion : that, in the course of the following week, she 
has returned to her notes to the amount of £200,000, to be 
placed to the credit of depositors ; and that, in the next, 
£200,000 are withdrawn in bullion for exportation. The 
following is the state of aflfairs, at these several periods, under 
the existing system : — 





Circulation. 


Securities. 


Deposits. 


Bullion. 


1st, - - 


- - £20,000,000 


£20,000,000 


£10,000,000 


£10,000,000 


2d, - - 


- - 19,800,000 


20,000,000 


10,200,000 


10,000,000 


3d, - - 


- - 19,800,000 


20,000,000 


10,000,000 


9,800,000 



* Previously to the passage of the present law, a memorial was presented to 
Parliament, signed by many of the principal bankers and merchants of Lon- 
don, remonstrating against the restriction on the bank issues, on the ground 
that circumstances might arise that would render necessary some extra expan- 
sion, with a view to the preservation of merchants, bankers, and traders, from 
ruin ; but the Minister resisted the application. He had seen the directors, in 
1825, 1836, and 1839, increasing their loans, with ruin staring them in the 
face ; and he desired to prevent the recurrence of such a state of things, by 
making it imperative on them to reduce as the bullion passed out of their 
hands. How little such has been the effect of the law, may be seen from the 
fact, that, in April last, when the bullion had fallen to £10,000,000, the 
amount of securities was greater, by £4,000,000, than it had been in Decem- 
ber, when the bullion was £15,000,000. In all these cases, the bank found 
itself unable to control its own action. It had set the ball of speculation in 
motion, and it did not dare to stop it. A review of the proceedings of the 
institution cannot fail to prove to the satisfaction of every one capable of 
understanding them, that no case, appearing to require such interference as 
was desired by the petitioners, has occurred within the last thirty years, except 
when produced by the over-trading of the bank itself; and that by taking 
away the power to produce speculation, and thus striking at the root of the 
evil, would be obviated all necessity for interference with a view to remedy 
its consequences ; even had experience shown that it was in the power of the 
bank to afford any remedy, which has not been the case. It has always 
exhibited herself as powerless to relieve the community from the consequences 
of disturbance, as it has been powerful for its production. 



MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 199 

The fact of the return of any part of the circulation, is 
evidence of the existence of an excess in that portion of the 
currency, requiring correction, which correction is now being 
made by the public. Its conversion subsequently into gold 
for exportation, is evidence of the existence of an excess in 
the currency generally. To re-issue the notes thus re- 
turned, would be to re-produce the excess, and with it a 
necessity for farther correction. As fast as issued, they 
would be brought back, and gold would be demanded for 
them : the public thus enforcing the remedy just as steadily 
as the bank directors were producing the disease. If the 
latter persisted for any length of time, they would find them- 
selves drained of bullion, in consequence of a constant effort 
to compel the public to keep on hand a larger amount of 
notes than they wanted ; precisely as they have been on so 
many recent occasions. 

The remedy for an excess of currency is a reduction of the 
amount. Had the directors, at the close of the first of the 
two weeks above given, sold ^£200,000 of their securities, 
they would have absorbed .£200,000 of the unemployed 
capital of individuals placed w4th them for safe keeping, 
and would thereby have re-estabhshed the equilibrium ; thus 
preventing any necessity for the exportation of capital in 
quest of employment. If, on the other hand, deposits were 
converted into circulation, it would be evidence of a slight 
deficiency of the latter, and the bank might, with advantage 
to itself and the community, exchange an equal amount of 
its gold for securities. 

Had such been the system, there would have been no re- 
vulsions to alarm the prudent and drive them from trade. 
On the contrary, steady action and profitable business would 
have tended to increase the number of persons among whom 
to select its customers ; to increase the permanent value of 
capital ; and to increase the dividends of the stockholders. 
While the proprietors of the bank were thus benefited, the 
people of England would have been enabled to avoid losses, 



200 MAN and' HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 

to the extent probably of .£100,000,000, resulting from the 
violent revulsions in the United States : Canada : South 
America: India: and in almost every other part of the world : 
produced by the extraordinary unsteadiness that has been 
manifested. The directors, on their part, would have avoided 
the anxiety resulting from the existence of large habilities 
accompanied by small means, and they would have been 
spared the humiliation of seeking aid from the continent. 
All would have been benefited. 

It is usual to attribute the difficulties of the institution to 
a necessity for importing corn ; but a moment's reflection 
will satisfy the reader, that if it retained in its possession, in 
bullion, the whole of the unemployed capital of individuals : 
with which alone could foreign corn he purchased, except so 
far as manufactures would be received in payment : it would 
be entirely unimportant whether the owners thereof withdrew 
it, or left it in its vaults. If corn were needed, the owners 
of bullion would exchange their commodity for the one they 
wanted, and the bank would have no occasion to feel that 
any such transaction had taken place. It would have the 
same amount to invest, whether the bullion in its vaults were 
£1,000,000, or £16,000,000. Corn would rise in price, 
and sugar would fall : but the rate of interest, or the price 
of money, would be scarcely at all effected. Not having 
availed itself of the depositors' capital, to force down the 
rate of interest, the withdrawal thereof would not compel 
it to raise that rate. Perfect steadiness in the currency is 
entirely consistent with variations in the crops. They have 
no necessary connection with each other. 

It may be asked, why the use of the money of individual 
depositors should be more calculated to produce unsteadi- 
ness than that of the £2,500,000 of public deposits above 
referred to ? The answer is, that to that extent the public 
appear never to seek to use the funds in the hands of the 
bank ; whereas, individual depositors never willingly permit 
their capital to lie unproductive, and are always seeking the 



MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 201 

means of investing it. The man who has .£1000 in his 
desk, and is seeking to employ it, produces a certain effect 
upon the market ; but if, while thus engaged, he places it 
for safe keeping with a man who uses it, a double effect is 
produced. His .£1000 is invested, while he is in the mar- 
ket seeking for an opportunity to make it yield him interest. 
Prices rise in consequence of this double action, which does 
not take place in regard to the small amount of public de- 
posits to which we have referred. 

In regard to those deposits, we have had abundant evi- 
dence of the injury that may result from permitting them to 
be employed to an unlimited extent. The excess of re- 
ceipts, in 1835 and 1836, was chiefly at New York, and at 
the land offices of the West. As fast as it was accumulated 
at the first, it was lent out to the merchants to enable them 
to extend their importations, and thus increase the surplus 
revenue. In the West, it was lent to land speculators, who 
paid it to the government on one day, and on the next bor- 
rowed it from the bank to buy more land. The government 
parted with its land, for which it held the engagement of a 
deposit bank, and the latter held the note of the land-jobber. 
In the same way, the surplus of the British revenue being 
lent out to the merchants of Liverpool and London, has a 
tendency to promote importation and to stimulate impro- 
perly the increase of the public revenue : and consequently 
to increase the surplus to be left at the disposal of the bank. 

Much disturbance is now produced by the accumulation 
of the public moneys during the quarter, to be lent by the 
bank, and then called in, to be paid out in dividends : the 
consequence of which is, that money is always higher before, 
and lower after quarter-day, than the average. Were the 
bank deprived of the power of lending those moneys, a mode 
would probably be devised of paying them in advance : and 
thus a cause of disturbance, now existing, would be re- 
moved. The mass of the public debt is held by institutions 
and individuals that intend to keep it, and that desire to re- 
2C 



202 MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 

invest the interest at the most favourable moment. Were 
the bank to arrange to anticipate the dividends on all stock 
deposited w^ith them, the owners would soon find that their 
interests would be promoted by receiving them in anticipa- 
tion of the general payment, and investing when money was 
least abundant, rather than by waiting until it was most 
abundant : and by degrees the business of paying dividends, 
instead of being crowded into a few days, w^ould be distri- 
buted throughout the year ; to the benefit of the bank and 
the receivers of dividends. The one would receive interest 
for the time anticipated, and the other would invest with 
more advantage from being able to obtain them at any mo- 
ment : while the community would gain, because the inter- 
val between the accumulation and investment of capital 
would be lessened. 

England is now the great market for the gold and silver 
of the w^orld, and there is, consequently, towards it a con- 
stant stream of those commodities. They are arrested 
on their way from the place of production to that of con- 
sumption, and pass from hand to hand for a short time ; but 
their tendency to the crucible of the goldsmith is constant, 
and their arrival there inevitable. That country has thus 
far been to the monetary world, what the ocean is to the 
physical : and the tendency of w^ater to the one is not greater 
nor more steady than would have been that of bullion to the 
other, had the level been preserved as steadily. The slight- 
est increase in the supply of water, in any quarter, is marked 
by an increase of that tendency ; w^hile w^ith every diminu- 
tion in the supply its movements become more sluggish. 
Were the ocean to change its level forty, fifty, or a hun- 
dred feet at a time, as does the currency of England, not 
only would the flow be arrested, but we should see established 
a counter-current, producing ruin in all parts of the earth. 
Precisely such is the effect produced by England, w^hen she 
compels the export of bullion to any part of America : a 
trade as unnatural as would be the export of cotton to India, 



MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 203 

or of tea to China. With the United States, the export of 
the precious metals is a proper branch of trade. They are 
one of the channels by which the products of Mexico pass to 
the place of chief consumption, and silver flows from thence 
as naturally as do cotton and corn. 

It may be said, that even were the bank regular in her 
operations, she could not control the movements of the other 
banks. Such is not the case. She has been unable to re- 
gulate them in time past, because, from her own irregularity 
of action she has been unable even to control her own move- 
ments. With perfect steadiness on her part, every change in 
every part of the kingdom would be as readily observed as 
are variations in the temperature by the nicest thermometer ; 
and the check to every attempt at excess would follow in- 
stantly on its discovery. The people themselves are compe- 
tent to this, as will be show^n whenever they shall have afforded 
them the means of discovering the existence of such excess, 
but that is not afforded by the law of 1844, which makes 
the blind leaders of the blind. 

We think that a careful examination of the facts we have 
submitted must tend to satisfy our readers that it is possible 
to establish a system of such perfectly steady action that the 
movements of the world may be measured by it. Perfect 
freedom of action would be far preferable; but as it is highly 
unlikely that the bank will be, for some years to come, di- 
vested of the monopolies she enjoys, w^e have desired to show 
that she might exercise her privileges in a manner that would 
prevent all further injury : and that she might do this, not 
only without loss to her stockholders, but wnth positive ad- 
vantage to them. She has a monopoly of the right of fur- 
nishing the only species of currency that circulates through- 
out the kingdom, and she has likewise a monopoly of the 
public deposits. She should confine herself to the employ- 
ment of the capital thus placed at her disposal, and not enter 
into competition with the owners of unemployed capital 
placed with her for safe keeping ; but leave them to deter- 



204 MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 

mine for themselves w^hether they will use it or not, and whe- 
ther they w^ll themselves superintend its management, or as- 
sociate with their neighbours to open shops for that purpose. 
If there be a legitimate demand for money, they have a right 
to the enjoyment of the interest paid for the use of their own 
capital. If there be not : and they are quite as competent to 
judge of this as the bank directors : it is injurious to them to 
have a competitor in the market, offering to lend their mo- 
ney, when they themselves cannot find persons willing to em- 
ploy it : and thus forcing down the rate of interest, and com- 
pelling them to seek abroad for means of investment. Were 
she to abstain from such interferences with individual inte- 
rests, she might reconcile the community to the continuance, 
for a little further time, of the monopoly she now enjoys, and 
she would certainly obtain a higher average rate of interest 
than now : do as large an average amount of business : and 
make quite as good dividends : particularly if competition 
should induce a little economy in the management, which 
now does not exist. What is true of her, is equally true on 
this side of the Atlantic. Our banks have been led away 
by the idea of privileges for which they have paid, and 
which they have desired to use : and the consequence has 
been that their dividends have been less than they w'ould have 
been under a system of perfect freedom of competition. All 
the banks of Pennsylvania divided, for a quarter of a centu- 
ry, from 1815 to 1840, less than six and a tenth per cent. 
The average of the dividends of Massachusetts and Rhode 
Island, W'here freedom has been almost perfect, has been 
nearer the value of money in those states than it has been in 
the other. Over-trading produces a necessity for under-trad- 
ing ; and not only is the excess of gain then lost, but there 
is accumulated a mass of bad debts, tending for a time to 
deprive the stockholders of dividends altogether ; as we have 
so recently seen to be the case. The receiver of eight per 
cent, in one year has nothing in the next, and is obliged to 
congratulate himself, if his capital, though unprofitable, prove 



MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 205 

yet whole. Throughout the country, it is seen, that the mo- 
netary systems of the States are steady and profitable to the 
owners and the community, in direct proportion to the free- 
dom that is granted. The greatest of all regulators is per- 
fect liberty of action, securing unlimited competition, whe- 
ther by individuals or associations : leaving to the latter to ar- 
range with the public the terms on which they will trade with 
each other, whether of limited or unlimited liability. 

We have said that banks were as harmless as shoe-shops. 
Both are subject to precisely the same laws. The one is a 
place to which shoemakers bring their products, with, a view 
to enable each person in want of shoes to obtain such as will 
exactly fit his feet. If no such place of exchange existed, 
men with large feet w^ould be travelling one street, and en- 
countering men with only small shoes for sale, while in an- 
other street, w^ould be found men with large shoes meeting 
men with small feet: the result of all which w^ould be that 
many would have corns from wearing shoes that were too large ; 
while of the rest, the chief part would be suffering with 
pinched toes, bunions, and other results of shoes that were 
too small. The quantity of shoes in market would be al- 
ways greater than w^ould be needed if there existed a place 
of exchange, and the loss of time by both buyers and sellers 
would be exceedingly great ; and withal nobody would be 
fitted, and there would be no steadiness of prices. The 
shoemaker would be enabled at one moment to insist upon 
more than he had a right to claim, because possessing the 
only pair that would suit the man to be fitted ; but at an- 
other, when half a dozen with the same sized shoes chanced 
to meet with the single customer, the price would be as much 
below the mark. Where trade is free, shoe-shops exist in 
the quantity necessary for the business to be done, and their 
number tends to increase in a proportion rather below that 
of the increase of the population and wealth of the commu- 
nity ; and with every step in this progress, men are enabled 
more readily to supply themselves with shoes : while the quan- 

18 



206 MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 

tity required to be kept on hand by the shoe- dealer, tends 
steadily to decrease in its proportion to the quantity sold, and 
the price becomes daily more and more uniform. There is a 
diminution in the number of shoes idle for want of feet, and 
of feet idle for want of shoes. 

A bank is a shop belonging to the owners of disengaged 
capital : money, or currency : who club their means for its 
formation, and then divide the same into such sums as suit 
the wants of the various persons who desire to obtain the aid 
of capital : thus making shoes to fit the feet of their customers. 
One hundred very small capitalists, thus associated, may, in 
one place, grant aid to the great manufacturer ; while, in 
another place, may be seen half a dozen large capitalists, 
owners of the bank, granting aid to a thousand farmers, me- 
chanics, small traders, &c.* Where no such shop exists, the 
farmer may want aid to purchase seed or manure : the me- 
chanic may suffer for want of a steam-engine : and the manu- 
facturer for want of ability to keep on hand a sufficient supply 
of materials: and all may seek for a long time before finding 
a person that has the precise sum they wdsh to borrow, and is 
willing to receive the security they have to offer ; while at 
the same moment, other persons w^ho are able to afford the 
desired aid, and would be willing to receive the security, are 
seeking in vain for persons wilhng to employ their capital. 
The money-shop here performs the same duty as the shoe- 
shop. It fits the labourer w^ith capital, and the capitalist with 
labour; and the less interference the more perfect is the fit. 
Were the trade in money free, the number of money-shops 
would, like that of the shoe-shops, increase in a ratio some- 
what less rapid than that of wealth and population ; and with 
every step in this progress, there would be increased facility 



* Where land is divided, and trade free, large capitalists do not buy bank 
stock; because their capital, otherwise invested, yields larger returns. No 
better evidence need be desired of unsoundness in any system, than the fact 
that such men hold bank stock, to any extent, as a permanent investment. 

anks should, and would, if let alone, be only larger savings' funds. 



MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 207 

for promptly investing capital, and increased facility on the 
part of the labourer in obtaining the aid he desired. The 
amount of capital unproductive to its owners for want of la- 
bour, and remaining on deposit to their credit, would dimi- 
nish; as would the power of banks to trade upon borrowed 
capital : and thus every increase of freedom would tend to 
give increased steadiness in their action. 

The banks of Rhode Island, and of New England generally, 
trade largely on capital, and little on credit, because capital 
can be invested promptly and freely. In England, it is 
directly the reverse. Restrictions throw the trade into the 
hands of the few ; and banks of all kinds, from the great one 
in Threadneedle street, down to the smallest private banker 
in the kingdom, trade upon credit rather than upon capital. 
Joint- stock banks are bolstered up by long lists of what are 
termed << a wealthy proprietary," who are frequently only 
great speculators ; for men who are really wealthy will not 
assume the liabilities to which owners of bank stocks are sub- 
jected. 

The object sought to be obtained by aid of the several bank 
restriction acts is directly the reverse of what has been de- 
scribed as existing in Rhode Island. They prohibit the 
formation of new associations for the opening of shops at 
which the owners of disengaged capital can meet the owners 
of labour that need its aid, while they maintain in full force 
all the previously existing penalties and liabilities ; and thus 
tend to increase the quantity of capital idle in the form of 
deposits : to increase the power of banks to overtrade : and 
to produce speculation, to result in the destruction of their 
customers and themselves. 

They tend also to diminish the facility of obtaining circu- 
lating notes, and thus to increase the quantity kept on hand 
by individuals: thereby enabling banks to overtrade by means 
of their circulation, to an extent greater than could exist were 
they not in force. Every provision of those acts tends to 
increase the power of the bank to produce disturbance, by 



208 MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 

overtrading at one time, followed by imdertrading at the next, 
Every part of them tends to increase restrictions, and to pro- 
duce increased unsteadiness in the supply of money, and in- 
equality in its price. Every part tends to enable the few to 
enrich themselves at the cost of the many. Every part is in 
opposition to the spirit of the age. Freedom of trade, whether 
in money or in cotton, goes hand in hand with civilization. 
The bank restriction acts are a step, and a serious one, 
towards barbarism. They are in keeping with the system of 
tithes, settlements, and entails, by which the improvement of 
the land is prevented ; and with that which compels men to 
be still using turnpikes where they might have had railroads: 
thereby preventing them from combining the lime with the 
clay, and compelling them to cultivate poor soils for 95. a 
week, with corn at a high price ; when they might be now 
cultivating rich soils at 125. a week, and raising food that 
could be sold cheaply, and yet pay better rents than at pre- 
sent. They tend to prevent the local application of capital ; 
and to force it into London, to be driven abroad : when, if 
used at home, it would yield twice the return. They are not 
in keeping with the time. 



In regard to money, the policy of France has been the 
same as in all others of the machinery of exchange, viz. to 
increase its quantity and deteriorate its quality : and thus to 
prevent the application of capital or labour to production, and 
to compel men to continue to cultivate the poor soils. She 
has silver in abundance ; but she has few spades, ploughs, 
horses, cattle, or steam-engines. Every thing is forced to 
centre in Paris ; and the government borrows at four per cent., 
while the poor cultivator pays in interest, taxes on registra- 
tion of mortgages, and law expenses, more than half the pro- 
duct of his little property. The government cultivates Algeria, 
and he abandons the meadow to seek the hill-side ; or, in 



MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 209 

despair, flies from his land and turns soldier : preferring to 
eat the bread raised hy others, rather than to raise bread for 
others, while eating himself the miserable compound of chest- 
nuts, a little flour and water, that falls to his share. In regard 
to currency, as everywhere, the rule of France is, and has 
always been : great means for small ends. 



Closely connected in trade with England, the people of 
the United States have known little of self-government in 
regard to the machinery of trade known as money. At one 
moment capital stagnated in London, and States and indi- 
viduals were solicited to take it at low interest ; and canals, 
and roads, and factories, and furnaces, were commenced. 
At the next, capital was dear in London ; and their markets 
were filled with cloths and iron, to be converted into money, 
to be transmitted to England ; and then prices fell, and manu- 
facturers and iron-masters were ruined. The whole system 
of that country has been, and is, unsound and irregular; be- 
cause she has surrounded land and capital with restrictions 
that forbid the existence of regularity. For a series of years 
she forbade the investment of capital in roads, and forced it 
out to Illinois and Michigan : and soon all was ruin abroad 
and at home. Now she is forcing it into roads, and all is 
ruin at home. Happily for the people of the United States, 
no loans were made to them, or they too would be ruined ; 
but how far they will escape remains yet to be seen. She 
has commenced the habit of looking towards home ; but many 
years have yet, we fear, to elapse before she will fairly apply 
her wealth and labour to the production of food ; culti- 
vating her own rich soils instead of the poor ones of Aus- 
tralia and Canada: and until she shall do so, her system must 
continue to be unsound and irregular, unprofitable to herself, 
and dangerous to those intimately connected with her in 
2D 18* 



210 MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 

trade ; and of this no further evidence need be desired than 
is furnished by the events of the present year. 



With each step in the passage from the poor to the rich 
soils, population and wealth tend to increase more rapidly ; 
and with each step in their progress, there is increased de- 
mand for both : giving to the labourer an increased propor- 
tion of a larger product ; and to the owner of capital an in- 
creased return from a diminished proportion : and affording 
to all increased power of accumulation. The value of land 
increases with the development of its powers, and that de- 
velopment results from the application of labour and capital. 
Every measure tending to restrict the amount applied, tends 
to lessen the wages of the labourer, and the profits of the 
capitalist, both of whom can seek elsewhere the employment 
denied to them at home : and tends in a still greater degree to 
affect the interests of the land that cannot fly. The land- 
owner is therefore, most of all, interested in the abolition of 
every regulation and restriction that tends to the expulsion 
of either ; and especially interested in the repeal of every law 
that tends to prevent local unions for the formation of banks, 
insurance companies, manufacturing associations, and all 
other modes of combination tending to enable the fashioner 
to eat his food on the spot on which it is produced ; and 
thus to improve the quality and diminish the quantity of 
the machinery of exchange. With each step in the diminu- 
tion of the quantity required for use, the quality improves, 
and fluctuations tend to cease. With each step, banks be- 
come more useful and more safe ; with each, man acquires 
increased power to command the aid of wealth ; with each 
he obtains increased reward to labour ; with each, the pre- 
cious metals become less necessary as a part of the machinery 
of exchange ; and with each he acquires increased power to 



MAN AND HIS STANDARD OF VALUE. 211 

command the use of them for other purposes tending to im- 
prpve his taste, and to promote his enjoyment of life. 

The PAST says to the sovereign of the present : '< If you 
would reign over a numerous, wealthy, and prosperous, peo- 
ple : diminish the machinery of exchange between the pro- 
ducer and the consumer, by reducing the demand for money 
to pay taxes, thus diminishing the necessity for tax-gatherers ; 
and increasing the number of the producers." 

To the capitalist : " If you wish large returns to your capi- 
tal : labour for the abolition of laws tending to restrict you 
in regard to the modes of its employment." 

To the landlord : "If you wish large rents : oppose all 
measures tending to the export of wealth and population, and 
labour to remove restrictions on the land." 

To the labourer: "If you wish large wages: seek union 
with your fellows ; labour and economize ; promote the growth 
of wealth ; and wealth will give you power." 

To all: << Avoid war and waste !" 



212 MAN AND HIS FELLOW MAN. 



CHAPTER VI. 

MAN AND HIS FELLOW MAN. 

The early cultivator has no means of self-defence. He 
may be enslaved by any one stronger than himself. His 
neighbour is distant, and they are separated from each 
other by forests and swamps. The strong man constitutes 
himself proprietor of their persons and their lands, the pro- 
ceeds of which he receives, allowing them what he pleases in 
return. He is the lord, and they are serfs or slaves. They 
cultivate the poor soils, whose small returns scarcely afford 
sufficient food for themselves : but of this small quantity the 
lord takes a large proportion. They raise wheat and hogs, 
but they eat bread made of oats and acorns. Voluntary 
union being here impossible among the many, the few have 
power to compel union ; and men work together in gangs, to 
build forts or castles for their masters : to murder the subjects 
of his neighbour lord : or to burn their houses and ravage 
their little farms. Sometimes, we find them associated to- 
gether in larger masses for the building of palaces, the erec- 
tion of pyramids, great cathedrals, and magnificent tombs ; 
or for the cutting of canals through fertile lands, whose pes- 
tilential air sweeps them off by hundreds of thousands : and 
again, similar masses are found plundering rich cities ; ra- 
vaging kingdoms; fighting battles by sea and land; or building 
pyramids of human heads : the object of all these operations 
being to hand down to an admiring world the names of 
a Tamerlane, Bajazet, Scipio, Frederick, Louis, or Napoleon, 
who are held to be great, because of the infinite littleness 
of the people over whose destinies they rule. 

In all cases of involuntary union, the principle of unlimited 



MAN AND HIS FELLOW MAN. 213 

liability: solidarite : is seen to exist. The lord wants a 
certain number of men, and they must come. He loses a 
portion of his subjects in battle, and he calls on the balance to 
make up the deficiency. He wants a certain amount of an- 
nual contribution, and those who can pay must make up for 
those who cannot. The Hindoo who remains at home pays 
the taxes of those who fly to seek in plundering others, satis- 
faction for having themselves been plundered. By the con- 
scription laws of France, under the Empire, and perhaps even 
now, the family is bound for the services in the field of its 
members ; and if the elder son desert, the second is bound 
to take his place. The nation is held bound to supply the 
demands of the army, and when the boys of eighteen are ex- 
hausted, the conscription is anticipated and those of sixteen 
are taken to fill the ranks. Nero would have the people of 
Rome with but one head, that he might take it off. Towns 
and cities are held by conquerors bound for the conduct of 
all their citizens, and history is filled with cases of their utter 
destruction, accompanied by the murder of the men, and the 
violation of women, in satisfaction for the error, or the crimes 
of individuals. With the growth of population and wealth, the 
better soils are cultivated, and men are enabled to live closer 
to each other: and voluntary union tends gradually to super- 
sede the involuntary. Ceasing to labour in gangs, they cul- 
tivate pieces of land for which they pay rent : and thus indi- 
viduality grows with wealth, while union tends to give 
them a self-defensive power, by aid of which they obtain a 
gradually increasing proportion of the product of their la- 
bour. 

The fashioner needs the service of the labourer, and he is 
willing to protect him in leaving the service of his lord, to 
come to him in the little town. The lord looks with jealousy 
upon all voluntary union, as tending to lessen his powers of 
government : and at first he seizes his slave, carrying him 
back to the land from which he had escaped. By degrees, 
however, the town grows and becomes strong to defend it- 



214 MAN AND HIS FELLOW MAN. 

self and the runaway serfs who seek refuge within its walls. 
This state of things having arrived, it becomes necessary for 
the lord to content himself with a smaller proportion of the 
proceeds of labour, that he may retain a portion of his serfs. 
To make amends for this, he must devote more of his in- 
come to the improvement of his land : that the amount of his 
rents may grow, even if his proportion diminish. New soils 
are brought into cultivation, and the returns are larger ; but 
with each step in this progress, there arises an increased 
power of consumption on the part of the people, and a more 
rapid increased demand for labour in the towns : and thus the 
competition of landlord and manufacturer tends to enable 
the labourer to have a continually increasing power to deter- 
mine for himself where he will labour, and what shall be his 
share of the proceeds. With the increase of his power over 
the materials of the land, he thus gradually acquires the 
exercise of the right of self-government. 

His proportion thus increasing with the growth of wealth, 
he is incited to exertion : and with the increased power of 
determining for himself the manner in which his labour shall 
be applied, it becomes daily more productive. His habits 
are inexpensive, while those of his lord are not. He 
accumulates, while the other dissipates. He improves his 
style of living, and the other is compelled to do the same. 
He can afford it, while the other cannot. He buys land, 
which the other is forced to sell. He then cultivates his 
own land and keeps the rent himself, applying it to cul- 
tivating the better soils. There is thus a constant ten- 
dency to the division and transfer of land and power, as 
wealth and population grow: and to the establishment of 
individuality, and of perfect equality of physical, moral, 
intellectual, and political condition. 

If we look to England in the days of the Saxons, we see 
immense bodies of land held by Earl Godwin, and other 
great lords. In the days of the Conqueror a single indi- 
vidual held seven hundred manors. Later, the county of 



MAN AND HIS FELLOW MAN. 215 

Norfolk numbered but sixty-six proprietors. If we look to 
Scotland, we find the number of proprietors increase as we 
come downwards in point of time, in all those counties in 
which population and wealth grow rapidly, and the better 
soils are cultivated : while it diminishes as we recede from 
the rich soil of the Lothians, until we find the whole of the 
poor county of Sutherland the property of a single indivi- 
dual, busily engaged in expelling all the small people whose 
families have for ages exercised rights over land, guarantied 
originally by word, but unhappily not hy deed. If we look 
to France, we see vast properties continuing for centuries 
undivided because of the slow growth of wealth and popu- 
lation, and so remaining until the general confiscation of the 
Revolution. Till then, the lord was still lord, and exercised 
the droit de poursuite against the person of his absconding 
serf who sought employment in the towns : which were, be- 
cause of their universal poverty, incapable of affording him 
protection. In Spain, and Mexico, and Sicily, and India, 
and Hungary, we see immense bodies of land in the hands 
of individuals. In all those countries, war has prevented 
the growth of wealth and population, and the poorer soils 
are still alone cultivated. The reward to labour is small. 
The labourer has a small proportion of a small product, and is 
a slave, or little better : while the land-owner has a large pro- 
portion, with but little revenue where his possessions are 
not immense. If thence we pass to the Netherlands, we find 
the better soils carefully cultivated, the return to labour 
larger, the condition of the people better, and the power of 
the lord diminished. There, the tendency to an increase 
of wealth, population, and freedom, was at one time greater 
than in any portion of continental Europe : but the oft- 
repeated invasions of French armies made of that unfortu- 
nate country a great battle-field, and drove a large portion 
of the most useful population to seek elsewhere the security 
denied to them at home. Progress has been, therefore, slow ; 
but with the continued peace of thirty years, we see gra 



216 MAN AND HIS FELLOW MAN. 

dually advancing the power of the labourer over the pro- 
ducts of his labour, and therewith a steadily increasing ten- 
dency towards perfect self-government. 

The rent of land in England is estimated at ^630,000,000, 
and the proportion which it bears to the product is supposed 
to be one-fifth, which gives .£150,000,000 as the total amount. 
The number of proprietors is estimated at 200,000, giving 
£150 as the average rental of each. The total product in the 
days of the Edwards could scarcely have exceeded one-fiftieth 
of this amount, or about £3,000,000. Of this, the lord claimed 
probably two-thirds, or £2,000,000. The number of free- 
holders recorded in Domesday-Book is twenty-six thousand, 
but most of these must have been very small, as indivi- 
duals had whole counties : while the manors held by others 
varied from two hundred to almost eight hundred. In the ca- 
lamitous times that followed the Conquest, and particularly 
during the contest which preceded the accession of thePlan- 
tagenets, the mass of the small freeholders were swept away, 
and land concentrated itself in fewer hands; and we think 
it doubtful if the number at this period, who were really 
proprietors of freeholds, could have exceeded two thou- 
sand : with an average income of £1000.* 

The population being about two and a half millions, of 
whom at least two-thirds could have had little employment 
but in agriculture, and the remaining million of the product 
being divided among them we have 125. per head for each 
member of the family, or 21. Ss. for a man and his wife and 
two children. That this is not very wide of the mark, is 
obvious from the fact that the oxherd of this period has but 
7s. per annum, and the shepherd 10^., in addition, perhaps, 
to a very small quantity of very bad food, without cloth- 
ing, or any other perquisite. A quarter of wheat is sometimes 



* In regard to this and other estimates which follow, it will, we presume, 
be obvious to the reader that strict accuracy is not important, even if it could 
be obtained. They are given with a view merely to illustrate the prin- 
ciple. 



MAN AND HIS FELLOW MAN. 217 

2s. and sometimes 245., and frequently much more. If, 
therefore, we estimate the annual wages at one quarter of 
w^heat, or eight bushels, it is probably above the truth : and 
this is all that he receives for his owm clothing and for pro- 
curing a supply of food and clothing for his children ; sup- 
posing his wife to support herself. 

The product of land at the present time being taken at 
.£150,000,000, of which one-fifth goes to the landlord, there 
remain jEI 20,000,000 to be divided; and if the persons de- 
pendent on agriculture be three times as great as in the for- 
mer period, this gives £24: per head. There has arisen, 
however, since then, a large class of persons engaged in 
various operations connected with agriculture, intermediate 
between the land-owner and the labourer ; who absorb, per- 
haps, one-half of this amount, leaving the remaining half to 
be divided among the labourers : and giving j£12 per head, 
or <£48 for the support of a family, consisting of a man, his 
wife, and two children. This amount is perhaps too great. 
The latest estimate w^e have seen is <£40, and this will not, 
we think, vary much from the truth. 

The average rent of the landlord at the close of the four- 
teenth century being taken at .£1000, and the average amount 
received by the labourer's family at .£2, 8s., it follows that 
the landlord's income of this period is sufficient to enable 
him to pay almost four hundred men : while the average of 
our day being .£150, and the labourer's family requiring £)40, 
the average power of the representatives of land is not equal 
to the pay of even four labourers. The ability, in the early 
period, to pay so many men enables land to command their 
services for the maintenance of its power, and the lord is, 
therefore, always surrounded by hosts of men ready to do his 
bidding: whether for the collection of rents from his own te- 
nants, or the plunder of those of his neighbour. He is supreme 
legislator, exercising his powers Dei Gratia: and to question 
his right is treason against the state, i. e. against himself. 
2E 19 



218 MAN AND HIS FELLOW MAN. 

By degrees, however, wealth and population grow, better 
soils are cultivated, and forests disappear. Roads are made, 
and the little territories of the lords being thus brought into 
communication with each other, towns and cities grow : and 
the people obtain power to take to themselves a larger pro- 
portion of the proceeds of their labour: now become doubly 
productive. Out of the little and scattered territories grows 
a kingdom : and the towns and cities, and the labourers, feel 
the benefit of increased wealth and union in the gradual 
diminution of the thousand oppressions under which they 
have thus far laboured. The right of the landlord to the 
enjoyment of the tenant's wife : and his right to pursue his 
labourer, and inherit his goods : die away. Population, and 
wealth, and union, increase still further. With each step man 
rises in the scale until at length he comes to be consulted in 
regard to affairs of State, and the payment of contributions. 
The people are becoming strong, because they work and 
economize. The landlords are becoming weak, because 
they hunt, and feast, and make war. From that time to the 
present, such has been the course of affairs. With every 
step in the growth of wealth and population, we see evi- 
dence of an increasing tendency to union among the people, 
because of the constant augmentation of the means of pro- 
duction, intercourse, and exchange : and freedom follows 
union. With every such step, the power of the labourer 
over the product of his labour, whether in the distribution 
between himself and the land as represented by the lord : or 
between himself and the government as represented by the 
lords assembled in Parliament : has increased, while the 
power of the land and its representatives to control the 
movement of society, has diminished. With the more equal 
division of property, the class interested in maintaining the 
security of person and property has increased in numbers and 
power : while 4he class possessing power to disturb the pub- 
lic peace has diminished in relative wealth and strength. 
Security at home, and comparative peace abroad, tend now 



MAN AND Ills FELLOW MAN. 219 

to facilitate the production of wealth, and population tends 
rapidly to increase as better soils come into cultivation : and 
with each step we see a diminution in the power of the few 
to control the action of the many. The right to make laws 
in virtue of descent from lords of olden time is no longer, 
in regard to questions of general interest, exercised in oppo- 
sition to the wishes of those who hold their power from the 
people. Thirty years since, the House of Commons still, in 
a great degree, represented land. Even then the poor soils 
continued to be cultivated. Wealth grew, and better soils 
were brought into activity : and man and his interests ac- 
quired power in that house, at the cost of land. Fifteen 
years have since rolled round, and man has even at this 
moment acquired a stronger representation than ever before. 
He has obtained a vast accession to his power over his 
actions, and all at the cost of land. 

The value of labour and of talent is daily rising. The 
value of mere brute-wealth, unaided by mind, is daily fall- 
ing. The time seems to be at hand when every man must 
work, if he w^ould maintain his position in society. The 
direction of affairs has fallen somewhat under the control of 
mind, and has been, to a certain extent, rescued from that 
of mere matter. That this process is still going on, is every 
day more obvious. The men of our day are the representa- 
tives of a considerable portion of the popular mind. The 
measures of Sir Robert Peel and Lord John Russell differ 
little, because they are the decrees of a larger portion of the 
people than has heretofore controlled the management of 
their own affairs. With another step the whole people will 
take part therein, and then steadiness of action will begin. 
These results, too, are the direct consequence of measures 
to which the representatives of land are, and have been, 
prompted by a desire for the advancement of their own ma- 
terial interests. 

In all countries power has gone with the ownership of 
land, and hence it is that where poor men cultivate poor soils, 



220 MAN AND HIS FELLOW MAN. 

the few appear so great. With the growth of wealth and 
population the land becomes divided, and the many acquire 
power over themselves and their actions, in accordance 
with the decree of the great Creator, who made all men 
equal. 

The progress has been, as yet, comparatively slow, be- 
cause landlords have been the makers of laws : and larofe 
armies, and great fleets, and vast church establishments, and 
numerous colonies, have afforded opportunity to provide for 
their children out of the public purse. With the increasing 
desire for peace that in all countries accompanies the growth 
of wealth and the habit of self-government, these tenden- 
cies are passing away, and wealth grows more rapidly than 
ever : enabling the labourer and the mechanic, whether 
employer or employed, still more rapidly to improve their 
condition : while the land tends daily more and more to be 
compelled to provide for the families of its lords, heretofore 
supported out of taxes on beer, sugar, tea, and coffee. With 
the arrival of the time when fleets, and -armies, and colonies 
shall cease to exist, and it seems likely soon to arrive, the 
division of land will proceed more rapidly than ever before : 
and the necessity for the exertion of their powers, whether 
mental or physical, will be more than ever felt by each mem- 
ber of the community, from the lowest to the highest. 

Until recently, the land, as represented by the landlord 
and the Church, preyed upon the tenant.^ The latter made 
- improvements by which he might profit during the lease, as 
the former certainly did at its close. Recently, the landlord 
has taken a permanent lease from the Church at a fixed rent. 
Now, the tenants are demanding long leases, with " tenant 
right" — or a right to be paid for improvements. From that 
point to perpetual leases, the distance is not great : for as the 
power of man over his labour goes up, wealth increases 
more and more rapidly, and the power of land over man 
goes down. Every new soil brought into cultivation gives 
power to the tenant, while diminishing that of his lord. 



MAN AND HIS FELLOW MAN. 221 

Every railroad that is made : every engine employed in 
drainage : every tile kiln that is built : every newspaper that 
is printed : and every monopoly that is abolished : tends to 
improvement and equality of condition. They are insepara- 
ble, and those who would prevent the last, can do so only 
by retarding the progress of the first. 

Such has been the tendency in every country in which 
growing weaUh and population have facilitated the culti- 
vation of the better soils, and have enabled men to live in 
closer connection with each other ; while the reverse has 
been the case in every one in which they have declined. 
They may be seen increasing in the happier days of 
Rome, when Latium was filled with populous and prosper- 
ous towns which made treaties of commerce with Carthage : 
and the tendency to freedom was then great. Wealth dis- 
appeared as Rome declined towards the barbarism of the 
days of Scipio, of Marius, and of Octavius. Population 
diminished, and the best soils went out of cultivation. The 
free labour of the Roman citizens was replaced by that of 
slaves, and the pauper population of the city was fed by 
contributions levied upon Sicily, and Africa, and Egypt. 
With growing poverty land acquired a daily increasing 
power, and the habit of self-government disappeared ; the 
internal history of the State, almost from the days of the 
elder Brutus, being but a record of contests for power by 
pai'venus nohles on the one hand, and nobles by descent on 
the other : and yet the triumph of a plebeian demagogue in 
securing for himself and his fellows a share in the general 
plunder of the people of the State, abroad or at home, is 
marked in the story books which pass for histories even in 
our days, as a triumph of the people themselves. 

With the diminution of wealth in Gaul, we see arise the 
great land owner, with square leagues of territory, and sur 
rounded by hosts of slaves. He is seen, too, in Attica and 
in Sparta, as Greece declined. 

The prudent and industrious man grows rich and strong. 

19* 



222 ' MAN AND HIS FELLOW MAN. 

He can enforce his rights, because he respects those of others. 
The man who fights and drinks, closes his career in the poor- 
house, having lost all power of self-government. So is it with 
nations. In the history of none can w^e find this more tho- 
roughly illustrated than in that of France, which presents a 
record of selfishness, rapacity, and weakness, scarcely paral- 
leled among nations claiming a place among civilized commu- 
nities. Her kings have plundered princes, and nobles, and 
people. Her nobles and princes have plundered each other, 
and have been ever ready to combine with foreign nations 
against the State. From the days of Charlemagne to the 
present time, there has been, as formerly in Rome, an un- 
ceasing contest between the plebeian aristocracy that owed 
its wealth to the plunder of the last war, civil or foreign : 
and the more noble aristocracy which derived its title there- 
to by descent from the heroes of that which next, or next but 
one, preceded it : and the sole question between ihem has 
been as to who should now exercise the right of plunder, at 
home and abroad. The government has been one of wealth 
derived from the spoils of war ; from taxation, oppressive 
beyond imagination ; and from the spoliation of men who 
were sufficiently advanced in civilization to desire to apply 
their faculties to the purposes of trade, or sufficiently en- 
lightened to think for themselves in matters of religion. Both 
factions : the new nobles and the old : have exerted their ener- 
gies in plundering and murdering the people, and the peo- 
ple have done the same by them. In her external relations, 
we find the same universal selfishness and rapacity miscalled 
"love of glory." The consequence has been universal 
feebleness. The people have been unable to assert their 
rights against princes and nobles, while princes and nobles 
have been equally powerless against kings and ministers : 
and the whole nation has exhibited at all times, from the 
days of Rollo to that of Waterloo, an almost total incapa- 
city for self-defence. French armies have been, time after 
time, defeated in Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, and 



MAN AND HIS FllLLOW MAN. 223 

Italy : while foreign armies have repeatedly, unresisted, tra- 
versed France for hundreds of miles, and her severest de- 
feats have been on her own soil. Turbulence and rapacity, 
vanity and feebleness, are the characteristics which distin- 
guish her history beyond that of any nation of Europe. 
Under such circumstances, self-government could have no 
existence. 

By no people have the rights of others been so much re- 
spected as by the people of the English colonies of America, 
now the United States. In their progress west, they have 
encountered decaying tribes of savages, whose vanity has 
sometimes produced war. In their progress south-west, 
they have encountered the half-civilized people of Mexico ; 
and there, again, the vanity of the barbarian has produced a 
war that we could wish had been avoided. With these ex- 
ceptions, they have never fired a musket but in self-defence. 
Peace has given wealth and strength to the people and to 
the nation. Every man determines for himself what he will 
do with his time and his talents ; selling them to the best 
advantage : and every one participates in determining the 
amount of contribution that shall be required for the service 
of the community of which he is a member.* Self-govern- 
ment exists to a degree never before known ; and increasing 
wealth and population, the results of peace, give strength to 
the nation among the community of nations. The largest 
producers of the world, they are the largest consumers, and 
their trade is valuable : a fact which is due to the use of spades 
and ploughs in preference to that of swords and pistols. 
Without fleets and armies, they exercise a self- defensive 
power unknown to nations who employ important portions 

* " If he be a subject in all that concerns the mutual relations of citizens, 
he is free and responsible to God alone for all that concerns himself. Hence 
arises the maxim that every one is the best and sole judge of his own pri- 
vate interest, and that society has no right to control a man's actions, unless 
they are prejudicial to the common weal, or unless the common weal demands 
his co-operation. This doctrine is universally admitted in the United States." 
— De TorqueviUc. 



2S4 MAN AND HIS FELLOW MAN. 

of their people in carrying muskets and burning powder, and 
require from other portions heavy contributions for their sup- 
port w^iile thus employed. France employs thousands of 
labourers in fortifying Paris, while New York, at one- 
tenth of the cost, and in little more time, places tw^elve 
hundred thousand volumes in her district-school libraries. 
France expends hundreds of millions and wastes a hundred 
thousand lives, in subjugating Algeria, while the people of 
the Union, at one-fifth of the cost and without the loss of a 
life, cover their vast territory with a network of railroads. 
The one acquires strength that enables her quietly to settle, 
with honour to herself, every question in which she feels an 
interest, and to defend every right : while the other tyran- 
nizes over the weaker powers in her neighbourhood, and is 
set at defiance by those which are stronger. Restless weak- 
ness characterizes the one : and quiet strength the other. 

In no portion of the population of the Union are the beau- 
tiful effects of peace and rapidly augmenting wealth better il- 
lustrated than in the comparative progress and condition of 
their negro population and that of the West Indies. Imported 
into the latter, and there involved in ruinous wars, retarding 
the growth of wealth : we find that race at the date of eman- 
cipation, a few years since, numbering fewer souls than had 
been imported. If we desire to trace the cause of this, we 
must look to those countries in which population tends down- 
wards, and there we shall find the labourer badly fed : badly 
clothed : and over- worked : while his children perish of famine 
and disease. That such was there the case is obvious from 
the fact that from the date at which importation ceased, their 
number steadily declined, and was far less on the day of 
emancipation than it had been twenty years before. 

In 1817, the slaves of Jamaica numbered 346,000. In 
1829 they were reduced to 302,000, although the ipanumis- 
sions had been only 4000. What was the number emanci- 
pated, we do not know, but it was probably considerably less 
than in 1829. In the same period of twenty years, in the 
United States, their number would have increased to about 



MAN AND HIS FELLOW MAN. 225 

600,000. In Jamaica, labour was rendered unproductive by- 
wars, restrictions, heavy taxation, and interferences with the 
right of property. The value of the labourer was reduced, 
and his owner had no interest in improving his condition : 
the consequence of which is seen in the total absence of in- 
crease of numbers. More slaves were imported into this one 
island than into the w^hole American Union. The one now 
presents to the world a very poor population of 300,000 re- 
cently redeemed from slavery : the other one of more than 
3,000,000, rapidly redeeming themselves. 

In the United States, on the contrary, wealth has grown 
rapidly, and the demand for labourers has consequently been 
great. The return to labour has been large, and the labourer, 
w^hite or black, has had his share. Well fed, well clothed, 
and well housed, because valuable to his owmer, the three or 
four hundred thousand barbarians have grown to millions of 
comparatively civilized men. Still slaves, and liable to be 
sold, they are yet exempt from the dangers of conscription, 
which, to the separation from parents, wdves, or children, 
might add exposure to the dangers of war : to perish among 
the snows of Russia, or the sands of Africa ; or to return with 
the habits of the camp, and unfit to resume the peaceful du- 
ties of civilized life. Still slaves, they are exempt from the 
dangers of being impressed and dragged from their families 
to spend long years upon the ocean, engaged in the work of 
plunder and of murder, to return perhaps with the loss of a leg 
or an arm : and to find that their wives have died in the alms- 
house, and their daughters have been driven to seek by pros- 
titution the means of a WTetched subsistence. They are still 
slaves, yet they have before them no dread of invading 
armies, resembling those which have carried rape, murder, 
plunder and desolation throughout Spain, Germany, Italy, 
Holland, the Netherlands and France. They are still slaves, 
but their labour is valuable because aided by the machinery 
of rapidly growing wealth : and their masters, unlike those 
of the unhappy people of Ireland, would feel it a serious 
2 F 



226 MAN AND HIS FELLOW MAN. 

sacrifice were they compelled to ship them off, stowed 
almost in bulk, on board of ill-found and ill-provisioned 
barques and brigs ; to have the horrors of the middle passage 
repeated in these enlightened days. They are still slaves, 
yet their masters feel that they consult their own interests in 
feeding, clothing, and lodging them well, because wealth in- 
creases more rapidly than population, and their labour be- 
comes daily more valuable. Still slaves, and liable to be 
sold, they consume a larger proportion of the proceeds of 
their labour than falls to the lot of half the people of Europe 
who claim to be considered free ; and they are daily improv- 
ing in their physical, moral and intellectual condition, pre- 
paratory to becoming : as they will at no very distant day, 
and that without violence, free citizens and proprietors of the 
States they inhabit: the few^ miserable barbarians having 
become a numerous, happy and civilized people, because of 
the maintenance of peace and consequent growth of wealth : 
and ready then to unite with their white fellow- citizens in 
the great enterprise of carrying civilization into the heart of 
Africa, and thus perfecting the work already so well begun. 
In no other country has the race increased its numbers, because 
in no other have wealth and the demand for labour, and 
the price of labour, increased so rapidly. In few, if in- 
deed in any, of the countries of continental Europe, have 
the mass of the people exercised the rights of self-govern- 
ment in regard to the apphcation of their time, their labour, 
and its proceeds, in as great a degree as have the negroes of 
the southern states : although still slaves, and liable to be 
sold. Had it been otherwise : had they furnished as many 
soldiers, and endured as much suffering as the people of 
France, Italy, Spain and Germany : their numbers would 
have remained as nearly stationary. Wherever wealth and 
population have been permitted to increase, freedom has in- 
variably followed in their train : and evidence that such will 
be the case may be found in the anxiety of so many of the 
owners of slaves in relation to every measure, originating even 



MAN AND HIS FELLOW MAN. 227 

among themselves, tending in that direction. That slavery 
yet endures is due to the fact that concentration is diffi- 
cult, because of the constant error of the English policy, 
which forces men to scatter themselves over the thin soils 
of new states, while leaving untouched the rich soils of older 
ones. With concentration labour will increase in value, and 
land will become divided, and will be found far more valuable 
when well cultivated by free blacks, working for themselves 
and bringing into activity the better soils, than are now the 
lands and the slaves who scratch the superficial soil, while 
leaving untouched those more valuable which lie beneath. 
Slavery is one of man's weak " inventions," and it cannot 
endure in a country that enjoys the blessings of peace, of 
light taxation, and general freedom of action. 

M. de Tocqueville saw the tendency to self-government, 
but he feared it. He did so, because he had not studied the 
causes of its rise, or the phenomena which mark its exist- 
ence, and promote its extension. He speaks uniformly of 
France and the United States as the democratic states. His 
test of democracy is the division of land, not that of the ex- 
ercise of the right of self-government. In France, division 
is compulsory. The people are poor, and the little farm of 
ten acres which has given a miserable support to one family, 
is divided into two, three, or five, by the sons : and each mort- 
gages his share to obtain the assistance required to enable 
him to support a miserable existence. Land, there, still go- 
verns the man. In the United States, the system consists in 
letting every man judge for himself to whom he will leave 
his property : but if he leave behind him no directions, the 
law supplies his place, and says that all children have equal 
rights. In the one case, self-government is complete. In 
the other, it is nowhere seen. 

The habit of voluntary association is the essential charac- 
teristic of self-government. Without that, it can have no ex- 
istence. In the United States, the type of the whole svstem 



228 MAN AND HIS FELLOW MAN. 

is found in " the bee :" the union of the okl settlers to put up 
a log-house for the newly arrived family. Starting from that 
point, it may be found in every operation of life. The logs 
are to be rolled : the roof of the barn is to be raised : or the 
corn is to be husked. Forthwith, all assemble, and the work 
w^iich to the solitary labourer would have been severe, and 
often impossible, is made " a frolic" of, and an hour or two 
of combined exertion accomplishes what otherwise might 
have required weeks, or months. Does the new settler want 
a horse, or a plough, or both ? One neighbour lends him the 
first, and another the last, and he soon obtains a horse and 
plough for himself: whereas, without such aid he might have 
toiled in poverty for years. A place of worship is needed, 
and all, Methodists, Episcopalians, Baptists and Presbyte- 
rians, unite to build it ; its pulpit to be occupied by the itine- 
rant preachers of the wilderness. The church brings peo- 
ple to the neighbourhood, and promotes the habit of asso- 
ciation, while the lesson taught therein promotes the love of 
order : and in a little time the settlement is dotted over with 
meeting-houses, at one of which Baptists, and at another 
Presbyterians meet each other, to listen to the man w^hom as 
their teacher they have united to select. Is one of these 
houses burnt, the congregation find all others of the neigh- 
bourhood placed at their command until the loss can be re- 
paired. Next, we find them associating for the making of 
roads, and holding meetings to determine who shall superin- 
tend their construction and repair, and who assess the con- 
tributions required for the purpose. Again, we find them 
meeting to determine who shall represent them at the meet- 
ing of the county board, or in the Assembly of the State, or in 
the Congress of the Union. Again, to settle where the new 
school-house shall be built : and to determine who shall collect 
the funds necessary for the purpose, and select the books for 
the little library that is to enable their children to apply with 
advantage to themselves the knowledge of letters acquired 



MAN AND HIS FELLOW MAN. 229 

from the teacher.* Again, they are seen forming associa- 
tions for mutual insurance against horse-thieves or fire ; or Httle 
savings' funds, called banks, at which the man who wishes to 
buy a horse or a plough can borrow the means necessary for 
the purpose. Little mills grow up, the property of one or 
two, and expand into large ones, in which all the little capi- 
talists of the neighbourhood, shoemakers and sempstresses, 
farmers and lawyers, widows and orphans, are interested : 
little towns, in which every resident owns his own house and 
lot, and is therefore directly interested in their good manage- 
ment, and in all matters tending to their advancement ; and 
each feels that the first and greatest of those things is perfect se- 
curity of person and property. The habit of association is seen 
exercising the most beneficial influence in every action of 
life, and it is most seen where population and wealth most 
abound : in the states of New England. There, we see a 
network of association so far exceeding what is elsewhere 
to be seen as to defy comparison. The shipwright, and the 
merchant, and the more advanced and less active capitalist, 
unite with the master in the ownership of the vessel : and all 
unite with the crew in the division of the oil which is the re- 
sult of the cruise. The great merchant, the little capitalist, 



* " It is not impossible to conceive the surpassing liberty which the Ameri- 
cans enjoy ; some idea may likewise be formed of the extreme equality that 
subsists among them ; but the political activity which pervades the United 
States must be seen in order to be understood. No sooner do you set foot 
on the American soil, than you are stunned by a kind of tumult; a confused 
clamour is heard on every side ; and a thousand simultaneous voices demand 
the immediate satisfaction of their social wants. Every thing is in motion 
around you ; here, the people of one quarter of a town are met to decide upon 
the building of a church ; there, the election of a representative is going on ; 
a little further, the delegates of a district are posting to the town in order to 
consult upon some local improvements ; or in another place the labourers of 
a village quit their ploughs to deliberate upon the project of a road or a pub- 
lic school. Meetings are called for the sole purpose of declaring their disap- 
probation of the hne of conduct pursued by the government; whilst in other 
assemblies the citizens salute the authorities of the day as the fathers of their 
country. Societies are formed which regard drunkenness as the principal 
cause of the evils under which the state labours, and which solemnly bind 
themselves to give a constant example of temperance." — Dc Tocquevilk. 

20 



230 ' MAN AND HIS FELLOW MAN. 

the skilful manufacturer, the foundry-master, the engineer, 
the workman, and the girl who tends the loom, unite in the 
ownership of the immense mill : and millions of yards of 
cloth are furnished to the world by this combined effort on 
the part of individuals who, if they worked alone, could not 
have suppHed thousands. The property-holder of the city, 
and the little capitalists, are everywhere seen combining their 
exertions for the construction of roads and the building of 
steamboats, by the use of which the habit of union is in- 
creased. In every relation of life, the same tendency to com- 
bination of action is seen to exist. Everywhere, man is seen 
helping, and governing himself.* That he may do this effec- 
tually, wealth is necessary : for men cannot live near each 
other while forced to cultivate the worst soils. Wealth thus 
produces union, which is seen most to exist where wealth most 
exists : more in the^ast than in the west, and more in the north 
than in the south. Union in turn produces wealth, which 
grows more rapidly in the north and east than in the west 
and south : and thus wealth, combined action, and power of 
self-government, with a constant increase in the respect for 
laws which they themselves have made: manifested alike by in- 
dividuals and by States whose population counts by millions if 

* '< The citizen of the United States is taught from his earliest infancy to 
rely upon his own exertions, in order to resist the evils and the difficulties of 
life ; he looks upon the social authority with an eye of mistrust and anxiety, 
and he only claims its assistance when he is quite unable to do without it." — 
De Tocqueville. 

« The small number of custom-house officers employed in the United States, 
compared with the extent of the coast, renders smuggling very easy ; notwith- 
standing it is less practised than elsewhere, because everybody endeavours to 
repress it. In America, there is no police for the prevention of fires, and such 
accidents are more numerous than in Europe ; but in general they are more 
speedily extinguished, becauce the surrounding population is prompt in ren- 
dering assistance." — Ibid. 

■j-" When the clerk of the court advances on the steps of the tribunal, and 
simply says : ' The state of New York versus the state of Ohio,' it is impos- 
sible not to feel that the court which he addresses is no ordinary body ; and 
when he recollects that one of these parties represents a million, and the other 
twomillions of men, one is struck by the responsibility of the seven judges 
whose decision is about to satisfy or disappoint so large a number of their fel- 
low citizens." — De Tocqueville. 



MAN AND HIS FELLOW MAN. 231 

and corresponding increase in the return to labour, are seen 
constantly advancing ; each helping and helped by the other. 
Such is democracy, but of all this what exists in France ? 
Nothing ! The habit of voluntary association has no exist- 
ence, except for revolutionary purposes.* No meeting can 
be held without the sanction of government. No church or 
school-house can be built without that sanction. The go- 
vernment pays the clergy and the teachers. It builds the 
roads and bridges, and it makes libraries: supports theatres: 
sells tobacco and salt at its own shops: grants or refuses per- 
mission to the labourer to stay or to quit the Capital: dictates 
the terms upon which he may offer to sell his labour : regu- 
lates elections : fixes the amount of contributions to be spent 
in making wars, in building hospitals for the wounded, or in 
pensions to men who have produced the necessity for these 
wars : prohibits all meetings for the discussion of its mea- 
sures: interdicts such discussions in the newspapers :f opens 
private letters :| and finally surrounds the capital with cannon 
sufficient to lay it in ruins, if the people should talk too 
loudly. The democracy of France and that of her old ally 
against the Christians of Italy, and Germany, and Spain, are of 
the same character. Turkey has been ruled by pashas, who, 
after being allowed to gorge themselves, have been squeezed 
by the government. France has always been, and is, ruled 
by farmers-general with various titles : always squeezing 
the people, and sometimes squeezed. The reader who 

* "In America, public opinion acts by elections and decrees; in France, it 
proceeds by revolutions." — De Tocquevillc. " In countries where associations 
are free, secret societies are unknown. In America there are numerous fac- 
tions, but no conspiracies." — Ibid. 

■\ Six journals have just been seized for exposing government abuses, viz.: 
the Democratic Pacifique, the Estafette, the Gazette de France, the Union 
Monarchique, the Charivari, and the Reforme. 

^ A secret department exists in the French post-office, in which suspected 
letters are broken open and read, by order of the government. An employee 
who officiated in this department before the revolution of 1830 is now [1847] 
reinstated, at a salary of ten thousand francs per annum. This, it is alleged, 
afibrds a clue to the extensive robberies of the mail. Charges of corruption 
are made against thirty or forty officers of government. 



232 MAN AND HIS FELLOW MAN. 

would desire to see the type of the administration of France, 
should study the history of Fouquet. Solidarite : unlimited 
liability: is there the rule. Exemptions, therefore, by per- 
sons desiring to exercise the right to associate, are ob- 
tained with difficulty so great that to do so may be deemed 
almost impossible; and hence the absence of the habit of 
association which exists always in the ratio of the growth 
of wealth and population. Self-government is there un- 
known.* 

In England the habit of association has always, to a great 
extent, existed. It may be seen developing itself with every 
step in the growth of population and w^ealth ; and now with 
greater rapidity than ever, as witness the union of effort for 
the construction of her system of railroads. It has been, and 
is, however, restrained by an infinity of regulations and lia- 
bilities, relics of a barbarian age, tending to produce mono- 
poly of power in the hands of individuals : great agriculturists : 
great bankers : great merchants : great manufacturers : and 
great politicians : always the cause of great disturbance 
among the little people by whom they are surrounded. Hence 
the frequent combinations of workmen, and the ruinous 
" strikes," by w^hich trade is interrupted for wrecks, and the 
progress of wealth is impeded. Hence the incendiarism, ma- 
chine breakings, assassinations, vitriol throwing, and other 
acts of outrage of so frequent occurrence. f Hence, too, the 
tremendous contests in past times for seats in parliament : 
hence the wars, the large armies and jdeets : and hence the 



* " It is evident that a central government acquires immense power when 
united to administrative centralization. Thus combined, it accustoms men to 
set their own will habitually and completely aside ; to submit not only for 
once or upon one point, but in every respect and at all times." — Be TocgueviUe. 

j- " Incendiarism, machine breakings, assassination, vitriol throwing, acts of 
diabolical outrage, all have been perpetrated for intimidation or revenge." — 
Gaskill, Artisans and Machinery. 

" An engineer, who has contributed largely to benefit society by his inven- 
tions, tells the writer of this book that he has completed several machines which 
he considers of general utiUty, but which he dares not bring forward in the pre- 
sent state of the popular mind." — Results of Machinery. 



MAN AND HIS FELLOW MAN. 233 

necessity for penal colonies, appropriately designated ''hells 
upon earth!" like Norfolk Island. The tendency to self- 
government has there existed in a degree unknown to 
any other part of Europe ; for there wealth and population 
have grown wdth some rapidity, and there men have been 
most enabled to associate. It grows now^ more rapidly than 
ever, because of the great increase in the facility of commu- 
nication and intercourse : and the result is increased harmony. 
Men can now differ in opinion without fighting. They begin 
now to recognise the right of their neighbours to worship God 
after their own fashion : and to vote for protection, or free 
trade, as they please, without being mobbed or stoned; as 
has been shown in the late election : a great triumph of the 
principle of self-government. The hustings of London and 
Manchester, and of England generally, have been almost as 
quiet as the election grounds of the United States have alw^ays 
been. The voters felt that they had rights to defend, and 
duties to perform : not masters to serve. In many places 
they went to the work seriously and gravely, like the Puritans 
of old ; and such men do not need to fight at elections. The 
more earnestness, the more quiet, the more union, and the 
more strength. 

The events of the last thirty years of peace contrast most 
forcibly with those of the previous twenty years of war, waste, 
and ruin. During the whole of that period, land was strength- 
ening itself against man. Properties were enlarged, and pro- 
perty-owners became too great to look after their own affairs. 
Little farmers were expelled, to make w^ay for great ones. 
The little ones w^ent to the poor-house, and the great ones 
were ruined by making improvements on short leases ; 
although, during the whole time, land was making laws to 
limit the supply of food, and keep up rents. The power of 
the people over their ow^n actions rapidly diminished during 
the war, and its close found the mass of them reduced to 
pauperism, and subject to all the insolence of little tyrants 
directly or indirectly representing the land. Such were the 
'iG 20* 



234 MAN AND HIS FELLOW MAN. 

results of a diminution in the proportion of wealth to popu- 
lation. The results of an increase in that proportion we are 
now witnessing. 

The effect of a long period of peace in promoting the 
growth of wealth and freedom was first exhibited in Prussia, 
in the removal of all impediments to the free disposal of land 
by sale, gift, or will. Next, we find the emancipation, with 
compensation to the lord, of the small free proprietor : the 
tenant in perpetuity : previously subject to the most barbarous 
and absurd regulations. Again, we meet with the associations 
of land-owners, large and small, for the institution of provin- 
cial mortgage banks, whose operations have since grown to 
a vast amount, and have increased the power of cultivating 
the deeper and better soils, which before could not be reached 
because of the inferiority of the machinery in use. Labour 
has become more productive, and population and wealth 
have grown with great rapidity ; and with them, the habit of 
peace and the tendency to union : and the ability to demand 
control over the power of taxation, and the administration 
of the public affairs. Hence the new constitution : an im- 
portant step towards self-government. 

In her exterior relations Prussia has afforded signal evi- 
dence of the tendency of growing wealth and population to 
produce peace, in the establishment of the great Commercial 
League of Northern Germany. France has always made 
deserts between her and her neighbours : in the Palatinate : 
in the Netherlands : in Piedmont and Savoy : and in Cata- 
lonia. Her policy has been that of glory and isolation : and 
such is it now. Prussia, on the contrary, labours to convert 
deserts into farms, intersected by railroads. The one ad- 
vances rapidly. The other scarcely at all. England is now 
pursuing, in that respect, the policy of Prussia. Self-govern- 
ment and the disposition to union with her colonies on terms 
of equality, and with foreign nations, are growing by degrees ; 
yet impeded everywhere by monopolies of land and capital, 
producing unsteadiness, and exercising a strong repulsive 



MAN AND HIS FELLOW MAN. 235 

power. She repeals her corn-laws, but other nations cling 
more closely to their tariffs ; feeling that the union between 
the producer and consumer at home is more* profitable than 
imion with nations abroad, and disunion at home. The 
United States, however, advance most rapidly in wealth and 
population : and their tendency to union is proportionably 
great. State after State has been added to the Union, 
silently : but it was reserved for Texas to prove the extraor- 
dinary attractive power of superior wealth. That State was 
settled chiefly by men who had opposed the protective 
policy ; and among the leaders were found some of those who 
had most warmly advocated the Nullification Law of 1832. 
Ten years later, the tariff of 1842, held by them to be equally 
objectionable, was passed. Texas had then established herself 
as an independent power, recognised by the principal powers 
of the earth : yet she gladly sunk that independence, and 
became a State of the Union, adding another star to its flag. 
Had war been the policy of the people, they would have re- 
mained poor ; and Texas would still be a wilderness : or, if a 
State, she would have remained an independent one. Again, if 
we desire to see the effect of self-government in producing ha- 
bits of order and union, we may turn to the settlers of Oregon ; 
and see them quietly forming a constitution for themselves, 
1 Electing township and county officers, members of the little 
legislature, and governor. The whole machinery of govern- 
ment is there, self-existent. The people knew what they 
wanted, and they made it. They wanted no essays on go- 
vernment : no great men to teach them. At home they had 
practised respect for the rights of others: and when abroad 
they proved that they had not forgotten the lesson. 

According to several eminent writers, there exist various 
races of men : and some of the most eminent of the writers 
of our time have been disposed to attribute to the antipathy 
of those races many of the phenomena to which we have 
referred. A more careful study of history might, however, 
as we think, satisfy them that although men are of various 



236 MAN AND HIS FELLOW MAN, 

colours, white, red, brown, and black, there have existed 
from the creation to the present time but two races, to wit, 
the great race and the small one : the race of the few and 
that of the many : the race that lives by the labour of others, 
and that which lives by their own : the race of the plunderers 
and that of the plundered.* 

When population is small, and poor men cultivate poor 
soils, the great race abounds ; but as wealth and population 
increase, and rich men cultivate rich soils, the great race 
becomes rare. Parmi les aveugles, les borgnes sont rois : 
and this is equally true whether we consider man physically, 
morally, intellectually, or politically. 

Throughout Africa, kings and ministers abound, and kings 
and ministers moke razzias, carrying off and selling for slaves 
the inoffensive subjects of their neighbour kings : first perhaps 
mutilating them that they may better serve the purposes of 
their masters. Throughout Asia, the great race is numerous. 
Kings and kings' sons, ministers and their dependents, ze- 
mindars and other officers, down to the mundils and potails 
of villages, plunder the poor people by whom they are sur- 
rounded : each to be plundered in turn by those above. In 
Mexico, too, the great race is numerous, for there the whole 
people cultivate the poorest soils. Daily revolutions produce 
a daily supply of men ready to manage the property of 
others, and to enrich themselves by the profits of manage- 
ment. Armies are mainly composed of generals, colonels, 
and majors, all ready to give orders, but none ready to 
obey. 

If we follow the history of Athens, we can see a gradual 
increase in the numbers of the great race, until the whole 

* " The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is 
composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow and the men who lend. 
The infinite superiority of the former, which I choose to designate as the great 
race, is discernible in their figure, port, and a certain instinctive sovereignty. 
The latter are born degraded. < He shall serve his brethren.' There is some- 
thing in the air of one of this caste, lean and suspicious, contrasting with the 
open, trusting, generous manners of the other." — Lamb. 



MAN AND HIS FELLOW MAN. 237 

people became masters of the lives and fortunes of the in- 
habitants of a thousand subject cities ; and every man claimed 
to be fed, and clothed, and amused, out of the products of 
their labour. Greatest among the great, we find Miltiades 
and Cimon : Pericles and Alcibiades : followed by troops 
of members of the military aristocracy, all hungry for their 
shares of the spoils. Athens then cultivated the poorest 
soils, and great men were numerous : shining conspicuously 
among the little men by whom they were surrounded. In 
Italy, when towns and cities were filled with prosperous in- 
habitants, and men cultivated the most fertile soils, great 
men were rare ; but as by degrees those soils were aban- 
doned and slaves took the place of freemen, the great race 
became more and more numerous : so numerous at length 
that it became necessary to diminish their number, and 
hence the wars and proscriptions of Marius and Sylla : Pom- 
pey and Csesar : Anthony, Octavius, and Lepidus. With 
the decline of the empire, we may see the great race steadily 
increasing, until at length the number of those who lived by 
the labour of others came to exceed those who lived by their 
own. With the gradual revival of Italy, we may see in the 
kingdom of Lombardy a thriving people with few great 
men : but France came, and desolation marked her footsteps. 
The fertile soils went out of cultivation, because the little 
race were employed in building castles for their masters. 
In Florence, when wealth and population grew and man 
cultivated the rich soils, great men were rare. Perpetual 
wars brought poverty and the great race ; until at length 
those who laboured but little exceeded in number those who 
did not. In France, the great race have always been 
numerous. To that country Europe was indebted for the 
Feudal System : the system of the great race. Every petty 
leader had his castle, and all were at all times ready to plun- 
der such of the little race of merchants and travellers as 
came within their grasp. 

Throughout her history, that race so abounds that it is 



238 MAN AND HIS FELLOW MAN. 

with difficulty we can distinguish those who might be enti- 
tled to claim pre-eminence. Philip the Fair distinguished 
himself by his robberies under the name of alterations of 
the coin : but John and various of the names of Charles and 
Philip almost equalled him. He plundered the Jews and the 
Italians, on various occasions : but in this he was fully 
equalled by numerous others. He burned the Templars and 
confiscated their property: but Louis XIV. did as much by 
the Huguenots. He squeezed the people : but in this even he 
was excelled by Anjou, Berri, and Burgundy, who farmed 
the kingdom during the minority of Charles VI. France 
has been at all times the land of great men. Princes, 
dukes, marshals, constables, nobles, and gentlemen finan- 
ciers, revenue farmers, and tax-gatherers, have always 
abounded : the consequence of which has been that a very 
poor people has always cultivated, as they still continue to 
cultivate, the worst soils of the kingdom. 

England abounded in great men in the days of the Conqueror 
and his immediate successors, and they were surrounded by 
little men who cultivated poor soils. With time, great men 
became more rare, and the little men became greater. The 
wars of the Roses produced " the Last of the Barons," and 
many other great men. The number diminished from that 
period to that of the great rebellion, when the few became 
greater, and the man}^ less : and so it continued during the 
rest of that century. From that time the number diminished 
until near the close of the last century, when commenced 
again the era of great men followed by troops of officials : 
civil, military and naval : some employed in impressing 
seamen, and others in commanding ships and fleets : some 
engaged in crimping soldiers, and others in leading armies : 
some in imposing taxes and dividing among themselves a 
large share of the proceeds, and others in collecting excise 
duties on salt, beer^ tobacco, and all other of the commodi- 
ties used by the little men : and lastly, another large body 
in collecting means to support in poor-houses starving la- 



MAN AND HIS FELLOW MAN. 239 

bourers, their wives and mistresses, their children, legitimate 
and illegitimate. The few became greater and the many 
less. . For the last thirty years, the great have been becom- 
ing less numerous, and less great, while the little have been 
becoming greater ; but England still abounds in great men ; 
railroad kings, who dictate what roads shall be made, and how 
they shall be made : bank directors who make money plenty or 
scarce, at their pleasure : Ministers who grant or withhold 
millions to starving Irishmen : East India directors who 
support armies and make dividends out of the proceeds of 
taxes on salt and other necessaries of life used by the half- 
starved labourers of India : private bankers who fail and 
make no dividend : great lawyers, and doctors, and mer- 
chants, and manufacturers; grooms of the stole, equerries, 
generals, admirals, colonels, and captains; and county magis- 
trates intent upon enforcing the game laws : while the little 
people who labour are forced, not unfrequently, to content 
themselves with mud hovels and eight shillings a week: filthy 
cellars in Liverpool and Manchester: or rags and nakedness 
in coal mines. 

The United States, happily for themselves, have had few 
great men. The number varies, however, as we pass from 
old Massachusetts where the powers of the earth are most 
fully developed, towards Florida and Arkansas, where the 
richest soils are still covered with forests: or are a mass of 
swamps. The good ship Mayflower brought with her, hap- 
pily, no great men, and no little men. All were equal, and 
all willing so to continue. From that time to the present, 
that State, and those of New England generally, have had no 
great men to manage their affairs, the consequence of which 
is that they require little or no management.* They have 
had no great bankers, but banking is there more extensive 

* " All the domestic controversies of the Americans at first appear to a 
stranger to be so incomprehensible and so puerile, that he is at a loss whe- 
ther to pity a people which takes such arrant trifles in good earnest, or envy 
thai happiness which enables it to discuss them." — Dc Torquanlle. 



240 MAN AND HIS FELLOW MAN. 

and more perfect than elsewhere in the world : no great 
merchants, but the most perfect merchants in the world : no 
great ship-owners, but the best ships : no great mechanics, 
but the most perfect machinery: no great manufacturers, yet 
they send their products to the British possessions, and pay 
duty while those of Britain are free : no railroad kings, yet 
they have made more railroads than any similar number of 
people in the world : no great schools or teachers, but the 
best schools and the best educated people in the world :* no 
army, no navy, no great lawyers or conveyancers, yet in no 
country is the secure enjoyment of the rights of person and 
property so complete.! 

As we pass from New England, south and west, popu- 
lation and wealth diminish, and men cultivate poorer soils : 
great men increase in number, and the village politician be- 
comes more distinguished ; while the little become less. Ar- 
riving in South Carolina, we find a diminishing population 
cultivating worn-out soils : and there we find greater men 
than elsewhere in the Union, while the little there become 
least. 

The wolf is great amid a flock of sheep. The " medi- 
cine man" is great among the savages of the Rocky Moun 
tains. The Sultan of Delhi is great among his poor sub- 
jects. Blackbeard was great among inoffensive and de- 
fenceless merchantmen. Drake was great among the poor 

* " There is no other region in Anglo-Saxondom, containing 750,000 souls, 
where national education has been carried so far." — Lyell. " In no subject 
do the Americans display more earnestness than in their desire to improve 
their system of education, both elementary and academical." — Ibid. 

-j- " In the United States, the democracy perpetually raises fresh individuals 
to the conduct of public affairs, and the measures of the administration are, 
consequently, seldom regulated by the strict rules of consistency or of order. 
But the general principles of the government are more stable, and the opi- 
nions most prevalent in society are more durable than in many other coun- 
tries. When once the Americans have taken up an idea, whether it be well 
or ill founded, nothing is more difficult than to eradicate it from their minds. 
The same tenacity of opinion has been observed in England, where, for the 
last century, greater freedom of conscience and more invincible prejudices 
liave existed, than in all the other countries of Europe." — De Tocqueville. 



MAN AND HIS FELLOW MAN. 241 

people of Carlhagena. Locke and Bacon were greater than 
is now Herschel, who to all they knew adds vast treasures 
of knowledge. Saints were numerous when Christianity 
scarcely had an existence, and when the test of orthodoxy 
consisted in the belief or denial of the doctrine of the im- 
maculate conception. Elizabeth, to her parliament and her 
people, was a greater queen than is now the occupant of the 
throne ; and the poor Duke of Newcastle was a far greater 
man than is the existing Chancellor of the Exchequer. Men 
are thus great, or little, precisely in the ratio of the greatness 
or littleness of those by whom they are surrounded : and the 
true test of a nation is to be found not in the size of their 
great, but in that of their Httle, men. Where all are in- 
formed, distinction in letters is difficult. Where all are re- 
ligiously disposed, few can claim canonization. Where all 
exercise power over themselves, few can interfere with the 
happiness or property of others. Complaints are made of 
the decline of science in England, accompanied, perhaps, 
\\ith reference to the brighter days of Newton, Locke and 
Bacon : when tens of thousands possess all the knowledge 
of the three combined, and add thereto an intimate know- 
ledge of sciences whose names even were unknown, and 
whose existence was unsuspected in those "good old times." 

Greatness and goodness rarely travel in company, for where 
great men exist, the little men are w^eak, and their masters 
are profligate. Demosthenes thundered out his Philippics 
while pocketing the bribes of Philip : Cicero displayed equal 
eloquence in defence of Crassus and in the impeachment of 
Verres : and Mirabeau was by turns the partisan of the 
Revolution and the Throne. 

The great man : lord of the little man who cultivates the 
poor soils : pays himself for performing the duties of govern- 
ment, and leaves little for his slave. The man who culti- 
vates the rich soils pays his servants for attending to his 
affairs, and keeps much himself. 

Throughout India, the great man revels in luxury, while 
2H 21 



242 MAN AND HIS FELLOW MAN. 

the little man perishes, not unfrequently, of famine. The 
general has large pay : but the soldier, who executes the 
orders, receives little, and must pay himself by plunder. The 
high officials are paid, and pay themselves in addition. The 
lower ones receive little pa}^, and they too pay themselves. 
Such, too, is the case in Russia, Spain, Mexico, Egypt, and 
other countries in which the poorest soils are cultivated, and 
where men are least free. 

In France too such has been the universal rule. Kings, 
princes, lords, gentlemen, bishops and archbishops, farmers- 
general, and financiers of all kinds, paid themselves. Soldiers 
and tax-collectors received little pay, but paid themselves by 
living on the people. Such is still the case. Those who 
administer the government take openly sixteen hundred mil- 
lions a year out of a gross product of seven thousand millions : 
and with this palaces are maintained : galleries established : 
fetes and entertainments given : soldiers and sailors, and 
equipages, and wives, and mistresses supported. To this is to 
be added the prices, privately paid, for licenses for the build- 
ing of opera-houses, and for concessions of railroads and pub- 
lic contracts : and thus all pay themselves.* The poor subordi- 
nate receives less than is required for his support, and he 
too pays himself. The wretched conscript, torn from his family 
and friends, receives five dollars a year, in addition to poor 
clothing and little food, and he too must pay himself f The 
miserable payer of taxes continues necessarily to cultivate the 
worst soils, for he alone cannot pay himself. 

* The proceedings in the case of M. Teste throw much light on the system. 

+ The pay of a common soldier is forty-eight centimes, [or nine cents] per 
day. From this pittance ten centimes are withheld as a provision for the 
linen and stockings he may require, and for the small articles necessary to his 
dress and cleanliness ; thirty centimes are withheld for his food, and he is sup- 
plied with one pound and a half of tolerable bread in addition; eight centimes, 
''about one and a half cents,) are given to him for pocket money. * * * 
The soldier has two meals a day. * * * The first is composed of soup, and 
a quarter of a pound of boiled beef; the second of a small portion of vegetables, 
generally of potatoes or beans, with a quarter of a pound of mutton or veal. 
The only drink given is water. 



MAN AND HIS FELLOW MAN. 243 

In England, too, great men pay themselves : and hence the 
enormous salaries of a country whose production is less than 
that of the United States. Bishops accumulate vast fortunes, 
and chancellors become << leviathans of wealth." Ministers 
and ambassadors, to great private fortunes, add the emolu- 
ments of office, varying from $30,000 to $60,000 per 
annum. Viceroys and governors-general have princely 
revenues, and chancellors' sons exist on salaries of $20,000 
a year : while noble clerks sell to the government the privi- 
lege of suppressing their useless offices, for pensions vary- 
ing from $6000 to $10,000, and even more. Lords, ladies, 
chancellors and judges, whose name is legion, figure on 
the pension list, while sinecures abound. Meanwhile, 
the poor subordinate, who does the work : the letter-sorter 
and the tide-waiter : starve upon miserable salaries : and 
hence the dangers that attend the transmission of money by 
the post,* and hence, too, the bribery of custom-house offi- 
cers, and the frauds upon the revenue. With the thirty years 
of peace, and the consequent growth of wealth and population, 
some change has been effected, and the great are somewhat 
less paid, while the subordinate receives somewhat more: but 
the fact that land still pays itself is made obvious on all 
occasions. 

If we look to Attica, we may trace the gradual rise of this 
state of things from the days of Solon to those of Pericles, 
who involved his country in war in preference to producing 
his accounts : and thence to Herodes Atticus, who paid him- 
self so abundantly as to incur the displeasure of a master 
well versed in the payment of himself and friends. So in 
Rome, as cultivation diminished, we may trace the growth 
of the habit of self payment from the days of Cincinnatus, 



* Colonel Maberly, the deputy postmaster-general, stated some years since 
that the losses were terrific. In the United States, on the contrary, with 
14,000 post-offices, and with more remittances of money than all the world be- 
side, the losses are so trivial as to be estimated at only the two-hundredth part 
of one per cent. 



244 MAN AND HIS FELT.OW MAN. 

who tilled his own little farm, to those of Scipio whose 
accounts were not producible : to those of Pompey and 
Caesar, whose debts were counted by millions ; and those of 
Commodus, who, in his brief reign, squandered the accumu- 
lations of his father and found the vast revenues of the 
empire insufficient for the gratification of his beastly appe- 
tites. With each step in this progress, we find population 
and wealth diminishing, the fertile lands abandoned, and the 
people becoming more and more slaves. 

In the United States, the people pay their servants, and all 
are paid according to their services. In the New England 
states, the people govern themselves, and their servants have 
little to do, and therefore receive little. The people have, 
therefore, self-government, good government, and cheap 
government. As with all other machinery, it becomes less 
costly as it improves in quality. The friction on a railroad 
is small, and therefore goods are cheaply carried. The 
turnpike gives more friction and more cost. As we pass 
south from New England we find less self-government : less 
good government : and more costly government. The people 
who cultivate inferior soils are obliged to content themselves 
with turnpikes, and with governors to whom they pay high 
salaries. In the government of the Union, the president re- 
ceives a salary that is large in proportion to the business that 
he has to do, yet moderate by comparison. The chief offi- 
cers of government are reasonably paid, but the inferior ones 
are always fully paid.* The custom-house officer has full 
wages, and hence the small amount of frauds upon the 
revenue. The letter-sorter receives full wages, and hence 
it is that the transmission of money through a country 
with fourteen thousand post-offices is attended with risk so 

* " The mean of American salaries is much superior to ours. When the 
Federal or State governments want capable men, they do as American mer- 
chants do, they pay them. * * * In the Treasury Department, of one hun- 
dred and fifty-eight persons employed, there are but six who have less than 
§51000 ; but it is equally true that there are only two who have more than 
$2060:'— Chevalier. 



MAN AND HIS FKLLOW MAN. 245 

small as scarcely to be estimated. The common soldier has 
high wages. Labour is always in demand, and he must 
have the market price. Wars, therefore, are expensive and 
undesirable : while in France they constitute cheap pas- 
time for the great, who take large salaries themselves and 
give the poor soldier almost nothing in return for his time. 

Where wealth and population grow, the price of labour 
rises, and soldiers and sailors must have hi^fher wagfes to 
secure their services. As the better soils are cultivated, 
wars, therefore, become more and more expensive : and thus 
while the habit of union and peace tends steadily to increase, 
the costliness of war tends in the same direction. In every 
w^ay, therefore, does wealth tend to promote the further 
growth of wealth, and the development of the rich treasures 
of the earth. 

If now we inquire, what is the service rendered by those 
who thus pay themselves, we find it to resolve itself into the 
one word, government ; and by this is meant the manage- 
ment of the affairs of others. The minister governs all : the 
general governs soldiers, and the admiral governs sailors. 
The people govern nothing, not even themselves and the pro- 
ducts of their labour. Of that they are relieved by the class of 
the great, w^ho pay themselves for their trouble, and whose 
trade is war : for in time of war the spoil of friends and foes is 
largely distributed, and they direct the distribution. If we seek 
to find other services rendered in return for the large pay that 
is received, we shall find none. The great write no books. 
They furnish no ideas. They invent no machines. Bacon and 
Locke: Shakspeare and Milton : Arkwright and Watt: Wash- 
ington and Franklin: benefactors of the human race : came 
from the ranks of the little men, as has every man to whose 
labours society has been indebted. Great men and govern- 
ments patronize authors and artists, to the destruction of taste 
in literature and art : and authors and artists starve under 
their patronage. With the growth of wealth and population 
authors and artists are found contributing to supply the 

Q-j* 



246 MAN AND HIS FELLOW MAN. 

wants of the large class of little men, and then taste im- 
proves : and then authors and artists grow rich. Doing 
little good themselves, and being thus the cause of little 
good in others, the class of great men is one with which we 
may readily dispense ; and the most rapid advance in civili- 
zation will invariably be found where, and when, it is least 
numerous. 

With the increase of population and wealth the better 
soils come into cultivation, and men acquire the power of 
self-government in regard to thought and action, and in 
regard to the disposition of their labour and its proceeds ; 
and with each step in this progress towards perfect individu- 
ality there is an increasing tendency to union, peace and 
harmony ; tending to promote the further growth of wealth, 
and the further extension of cultivation, and to increase the 
power of man to associate with his fellow man on terms of 
strict equality. 

The PAST says to the sovereign of the present : If you 
would reign over a great nation : avoid war, and labour to 
promote the growth of wealth. 

To the representatives of the land : If you would have 
your properties increase in value : avoid wars and labour to 
promote the growth of population and of wealth. 

To the people : if you would acquire the power to think 
and act for yourselves : to determine how you will em- 
ploy your faculties of body and of mind, and what shall be 
the disposition of the proceeds : labour to prevent war, and 
waste. 



MAN. 247 



CHAPTER VII. 



MAN. 



The savaffe lives in constant dread of starvation. He 
draws his supply of food from the poorest soils. The lonely 
cultivator of the almost desert land is forced to depend 
upon the thin soil of the hills for support, and is in constant 
fear for his life, and for the safety of his little property. In 
every stranger he sees one poor as himself: one to whom 
his little stock of wealth, trivial as it is, would be a treasure : 
or if, perchance, the stranger come from distant and civil- 
ized lands : from among a people who cultivate the rich soils 
of the earth : the lonely man sees in the nails and beads, 
and other treasures of his visitor, what <■<■ would make him 
rich indeed ;" and avarice seizes on his soul. His labour, 
severe as it is, scarcely yields him food, and he has no means 
with which to buy. He murders his visitor, and seizes on 
his goods. Here we have combined, fear, rapacity, treachery, 
and cruelty : and such are, uniformly, the characteristics of 
the men who are forced to rely on the poorest soils of the 
earth for the means of subsistence. 

The man who cultivates the rich soils is animated by Ho[ e. 
He finds his labours blessed with large returns, and he sees 
in the underlying marl or lime, and in the inexhaustible sup- 
plies of coal and iron by which he is surrounded, the means 
of adding to his power over the comforts, conveniences, and 
luxuries of life. His neighbours are men who, like himself, 
have property, and who, also like himself, could fight in its 
defence should' occasion make it necessary: but both he 



248 MAN. 

and they feel that in their union there is strength, and they 
know no fear. In the future they feel perfect confidence, 
and from that confidence spring feelings of liberality and 
benevolence. 

By many of the teachers of Mr. Ricardo's doctrine, it is 
held that man works because he fears starvation. By others, 
taxation is held to be a strong stimulus to exertion.* Fear, 
the characteristic of the slave, is in their estimation the great 
moving principle in man : and the whip, in the form of taxa- 
tion, is held to be useful in compelling him to extract from soils 
of" constantly increasing sterility" the means of support, and 
the rent required by his lord. That such should be their 
estimate of the character of man is not extraordinary. Mr. 
Ricardo makes him, throughout, the victim of a sad necessity 
that precludes the existence of hope. He is destitute of 
power over the land, or over himself, and he can have no 
confidence in the future. The machine he uses must de- 
teriorate. He may escape, but Ids children must pay the 
penalty he has incurred by aiding to increase the numbers 
of mankind, and thus compelling resort to less productive 
soils. 

How far such views are in accordance with facts, we pro- 
pose now to examine. If man does commence with the fer- 
tile soils, and proceed downward tow^ard the poor ones, we 
must find, with the growth of population, a constantly increas- 
ing tendency towards the vices of the slave : fear, cruelty, 
rapacity and treachery. If, on the contrary, he commences 
with the poor soils, and if, with the growth of population, he 
is enabled to pass to better and ultimately to the best soils, 
we must find him constantly animated by hope, and prompted 
to new exertions for the improvement of his own condi- 

* " To the desire of lising in the world, implanted in the breast of every 
individual, an increase of taxation superadds the fear of being cast down to a 
lower station, of being deprived of conveniences and gratifications which habit 
has rendered all but indispensable, and the combined influence of the two 
principles produces results that could not be produced by the unassisted agen- 
cy of either." — McCidluck. 



MAN. 249 

tion and that of his fellow-men : and with every step in that 
direction the vices of the slave must disappear, to be replaced 
by the virtues of the freeman. 

« Hope springs eternal in the human breast," 

and she is the mother of liberality and benevolence, of kind- 
ness and gentleness. Without her, they can have no exist- 
ence. 

If we trace the history of the people of Athens, from the 
days of her prosperity, prior to the Persian wars, we can see 
the gradual growth of the vices of the slave. Fear prompts 
them to the atrocious butcheries of Corcyra and of Mytilene. 
Rapacity is shown in the seizing of the common treasure : 
iji the unceasing growth of taxes ; in the perpetual increase 
of their own pay as judges and legislators ; and in the appro- 
priation of the tribute to the maintenance of theatres from 
which the tribute payers were excluded. Universal tyranny : 
universal indolence : and universal pauperism : accompany 
extended dominion. 

In Laconia, we find a people that cultivated the poorest 
soils for the benefit of their Spartan masters : and there we 
find, at home, fear of the poor Helot prompting to acts of 
treachery and cruelty, while abroad we see fear of Athens 
exhibited in the starvation of the prisoners of Sicily : in the 
cold-blooded massacre following the battle of Mgos Potamos ; 
and in the history of the thirty tyrants. With each step in 
their downward progress we see land concentrating itself in 
fewer hands, until at length nearly the whole becomes the 
property of a single individual : and at each we see avarice 
and all the vices of slavery more and more abounding. 

In Rome, we can see increasing fear manifested in the 
murder of Pontius : in the cold-blooded destruction of all 
prisoners of distinction at the close of every triumph : in the 
ruin of Carthage : in the proscriptions and massacres of 
Marius and Sylla, and of the successive triumvirates : and 
in those of Tiberius, Nero, and their successors : and with 
21 



250 MAN. 

each step iii their progress, we can see land more and more 
concentrating itself: the fertile soils more and more aban- 
doned : and slaves more and more taking the place of the 
free people of the days of Serviiis. With each step, those 
within the walls become more and more pauperized ; and 
with each, rapacity, cruelty, and perfidy become more and 
more the distinguishing characteristics of the whole mass : 
rich and poor : nobles and plebeians : warriors and poli- 
ticians. 

For centuries in the history of Naples and of modern 
Rome, we may see indolence increasing as poverty compels 
the abandonment of the more fertile soils, and produces fear 
of starvation : while rapacity, treachery, cruelty, and jea- 
lousy, gradually come to pervade every order of society. In 
Florence, they may be seen advancing steadily, as wars and 
desolation force men to cultivate the poor soils of the earth, 
and substitute poverty for wealth. Perpetual fear is mani- 
fested by unceasing poisonings and open murders : and 
Tuscany at large presents a scene of rapacity, treachery, and 
cruelty, fitting it for the birth-place of the principal actor in 
the massacre of the St. Bartholomew. If, again, we trace the 
history of the same beautiful country during the last hundred 
years : from the accession of the present race of sovereigns : 
we may see population and wealth gradually increasing : 
land becoming divided : and cultivation extending itself over 
the fertile soils : while hope is seen taking the place of fear ; 
and justice and benevolence becoming substituted for the 
imiversal rapacity and tyranny which had driven population 
and wealth from the land, and had compelled its inhabitants 
to fly to the poor soils of the hills for safety. 

If we look to Spain, we may see perpetual fear manifested 
in the proceedings of the Inquisition, and of the government, 
whether in Naples, or Milan, Sicily, or the Netherlands. It 
may again be seen pervading her whole colonial system. If 
we desire to meet rapacity, cruelty, and jealousy increasing 
as depopulation and poverty compel the abandonment of the 



MAN. 251 

most fertile soils, we may find it in every page of her 
history. 

In France, perpetually at war, we see in the people almost 
constant fear of starvation : in the church, perpetual fear of 
liberal ideas, manifested by the atrocious burnings at slow 
fires of miserable heretics of both sexes ; by the persecutions 
of the unfortunate Vaudois ; and by the dragonnades of Lou- 
vois : in the lawyers, by unceasing intrigues against the 
nobles, and in the nobles, by corresponding intrigues against 
the upstart nobiUty of the gown : in the class of nobles 
and gentlemen, perpetual fear of insurrection, manifested by 
the building of forts and castles, and by the unceasing pro- 
hibitions of the use of even the most simple arms by the un- 
happy people : in princes, perpetual fear of assassination, 
as shown in thousands of instances, but most strongly in the 
barricades of the bridges of Montereau, and of the Sevre : 
and in kings, by a system of espionnage unparalleled in the 
world for baseness and meanness. 

If we desire to see rapacity and cruelty, we may find it in 
every page of her history, at home and abroad ; in the plunder 
and destruction of the Albigenses ; in the wars of the Bour- 
gicignons and Armognacs ; in those of Louis XI. and the bold 
Charles ; those of the League, and of the Fronde. If we 
look abroad we may find it at every period in her intercourse 
with unhappy Italy : with Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, 
and Holland. If we desire to find jealousy, it will be met in 
the unceasing invasions of Guienne and Normandy ; and in 
the perpetual succession of the puerile wars of Francis I. 
and Henry II. It will be found again in the fomenting of 
the unceasing wars of Germany and Italy, the object being 
the depression and ruin of her neighbours, in the vain hope 
of thereby raising herself. 

If we seek for perfidy, it may be found in the thousand- 
times repeated abandonment of her Italian allies ; in her 
conduct towards the unfortunate house of Savoy ; in her treat- 
ment of the people of Catalonia ; in the tiger-like attacks of 



252 MAN. 

Louis XIV. upon the people of the Netherlands and Holland; 
in the ruin of Franche Comte, to whose neutrality she had 
in her hours of distress and danger been so repeatedly in- 
debted ; in her conduct on various occasions to the Swiss ; 
in her perpetual violation of the rights of the people of 
Guienne, and Normandy, and Roussillon, and of each suc- 
cessive province added to the kingdom ; in her negotiations 
with the Turks, her allies against Austria and Italy : in 
short, at every step of her progress from the days of Charle- 
magne, and in every page of her history, internal and ex- 
ternal. 

Even now, w^e see fear in the fortifications of Paris ; in 
the enormous armies maintained throughout the kingdom in 
a time of general peace ; in the censorship and perpetual 
persecution of the press ; in her system of passports ; in her, 
system of espionnage ; in the opening of private letters ; 
and everywhere in her jealous interference with her unfor- 
tunate neighbours of Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. We see 
rapacity unequalled, in the collection of sixteen hundred 
millions of taxes, and their distribution among countless 
officials, embracing the families and friends of all connected 
with the government.* 

If we seek cruelty, w^e may find it in the suffocation of 
hundreds of unfortunate Moors in their last remaining place 
of refuge ; in the razzias of Algeria ; and in the recent pro- 
ceedings at Tahiti. In every movement we may see jealousy 
of England. That power is so unfortunate as to have a great 
marine and numerous colonies, and France is unhappy that 
she has them not ; and that she may have them, she w^astes 
hundreds of millions on worthless Algeria. 

England has a great trade with the East, employing labour 

* The whole number of officials appointed and paid by the government, 
liable to removal, and susceptible of promotion , and annuitants or pension 
ers; is 931,977, and the amount of their salaries and pensions is 397,000,000 
of francs, or nearly 80,000,000 of dollars ! To this must be added 400,000 
soldiers and 60,000 sailors and marines, making a total of 1,392,000 persons 
receiving pay from that portion of the nation which styles itself" The State." 



MAN. 253 

and capital that could be better employed at home ; and 
France, to rival her, expends millions on embassies to China, 
and expeditions to Japan, with little to send to either, and 
with little reason to hope that they will find in her a market 
for their products.* 

Poverty and WTetchedness : the necessary consequence of 
misgovernment : exist in every part of that great country ; 
and where they are found, the habit of union can have no 
place. t Society is divided into two great classes, separated 
by an impassable gulf: those who labour to produce and 
may not enjoy, and those who enjoy without producing. In 
such a state of things, fraud and deception : the habit of 
robbery and plunder : become habitual. | Confidence in the 
future can have no existence, and without that, feelings of 
liberahty and benevolence can find little place in the heart 
of man.§ 

* " I have always thought and said that the alliance of France was an advan- 
tage for which all the powers of Europe would contend, so soon as she should 
have established her government on a solid foundation, and abandoned that 
system of policy which consists in an unceasing repetition of the assertion 
that the whole world, envious of her glory and jealous of her power, is leagued 
against her ; that they threaten her independence, and would destroy her in- 
stitutions, but that she has only to raise her voice, to affright the sovereigns 
and liberate their subjects : ' she, the first, the most enlightened, the bravest, and 
the only free, of all the nations.' This stupid and antiquated system can result 
only in wounding their feelings, extinguishing their ancient sympathies, and 
causing them to call in question her glory, her genius, and her power. It 
tends to produce weakness and isolation." — Girardi^i. 

■\ " The citizen is unconcerned, as to the condition of his village, the police 
of his street, the repairs of his church, or of the parsonage ; for he looks upon 
all these things as unconnected with himself; and as the property of a pow- 
erful stranger whom he calls the government." — De Tocqueville. 

^ According to the Journal des Debats, many parts of France now exhibit 
a state of things resembling that which existed in Wales but a short time 
since. That paper says: 

" Bands of mendicants continue to spread terror in the whole of the Bocage. 
These individuals, dressed in gray blouses, their faces smeared with soot, six or 
seven or more together, obtain grain and money, uttering the most horrible 
threats against those who venture to make any observation to them. Similar 
scenes have taken place in the district of Parthenay." 

§ In France, " without the walls of the prison, religious ardour is met with 
in the ministers of religion only. If they are kept from the penitentiary, the 
influence of religion will disappear : philanthropy alone will remain for the 

22 



254 MAN. 

More than any other nation in Europe, England has en- 
joyed peace at home, yet has her poHcy been marked by 
many and serious errors. She has looked abroad, and ships, 
colonies, and commerce have involved her in ruinous wars, 
while her own richest soils have remained uncultivated. 
War, and preparation for it, have produced here their usual 
effects, in a degree corresponding with the extent to which 
war has been her trade. We see, here, fear exhibiting it- 
self in the maintenance of a standing army : in the prohibi- 
tion to the people of Ireland of the right to carry arms : in 
the revival in that country of the system of the curfew : in the 
opening of private letters :* in the trials for high treason that 
marked the early years of the late war : in the Manchester 
massacre : in the barbarous punishments of soldiers : in the 
collusion between high officers of the government and offi- 
cers charged with summoning juries for the trial of state pri- 
soners :f in the Rebecca riots : in the throwing of vitriol an;] 
various other modes adopted for inflicting personal injury : in 
the proceedings of the Luddites : in the constant resistance to 
the introduction of improvements in agricultural and manufac- 
turing machinery : and in various other of the modes of action 



reformation of criminals. It cannot be denied that there are with us generous 
individuals, who, endowed with profound sensibility, are zealous to alleviate 
any misery, and to heal the wounds of humanity : so far their attention, ex- 
clusively occupied with the physical situation of the prisoners, has neglected 
a much more precious interest, that of their moral reformation. * * * But 
these sincere philanthropists are rare; in most cases philanthropy is with us 
but an affair of the imagination." — De Beaumont and De Tocqucville. 

* " Let us begin by acknowledging that the case attempted to be made out 
against the present government, as guilty of something worse in the shape of 
post-office espionnage than their predecessors, has not hitherto been sustained. 
* * * The moment the Marquis of Normandy stated in the House of 
Lords that he had opened letters while in ohice in Ireland, it became evident 
to all impartial reasoning men that the two parties were upon an equal foot- 
ing." — Westminster Review, 1844. 

■j- Direct interferences have been proved " to have taken place between the so- 
licitor of the treasury and the officer whose duty it was to have maintained an 
impartial position between the subject and the crown," by means of which the 
crown has been enabled to pack the juries on trials of high treason. See 
Westminster Review, vol. 45, p. 210. 



MAN. 255 

adopted by individuals, and by those charged with the duties 
of government. Here, as elsewhere, fear has been accompa- 
nied with cruelty, as shown in her mad-houses, the horrors of 
which have, until recently, almost exceeded belief: in her mon- 
strous system of impressment ; in the prodigious extent to 
which capital punishments have, until recently, been carried : 
in the excessive overworking of young and feeble operatives : 
in the harshness exercised towards the class of unfortunate 
people who, from ill health, or inability to obtain employ- 
ment, are thrown upon the public for support ; as shown 
in the recent poor-law system, so merciless that it could not 
be enforced in reference to some of its most important fea- 
tures : in the horrible treatment of pauper lunatics :* in the 
maintenance of places of exile like that of Norfolk island, the 
"hell upon earth :" in the punishment of poachers rf in the 
expulsion of the Highlanders ; and, more recently, in that of 
the people of Sutherland 4 and both cruelty and rapacity 
are fully shown in the taxation of India, where duties are 
imposed upon all the necessaries of life, and salt is monopo- 
lized for the benefit of proprietors of India stock. Through- 

* <' Examples of the most horrifying description have been recorded by the 
poor-law commissioners, who, in their published reports, have given innumera- 
ble instances of the grossest barbarity. The portion of the domestic accom- 
modation usually assigned to these unfortunates is that commonly devoted to 
the reception of coals, &c. ; namely, the triangular space formed between the 
stairs and the ground-floor. In this confined, dark, and damp corner may be 
found at this very time no small number of our fellow-beings, huddled, crouch- 
ing and gibbering with less apparent intelligence, and under worse treatment 
than the lower domestic animals." — Westminster Review, vol. 45, p. 192. 

I In Buckinghamshire, with a population of 237,000, there were of summary 
convictions in 1839, 363; 1840, 370; 1841, 407; 1842,511; and 1843, 
466. Game law convictions in 1839, 89; 1840, 99; 1841, 125; 1842, 134; 
and 1843, 178. Proportion per cent, of game law to summary convictions in 

1839, 21.5; 1840, 26.1 ; 1841, 30.7; 1842, 26.1 ; and 1843, 31.8. Propor- 
tion of game law convictions to 100,000 of male population in 1839, 118; 

1840, 130; 1841, 163; 1842, 174; and 1843, 230. Increase per cent. 95.2. 
i: Three thousand families were expelled from their htlle farms on the Suther- 
land estate, and their villages burnt. Two Sicres per family were allowed them 
elsewhere, to be held on short leases, on payment of a rent of two shillings and 
six pence per acre. Nearly the whole race of Highlanders has been expelled 
in a similar manner, and their habitations destroyed. 



256 MAN. 

out England, Hope does not, as a rule, prevail. The " un- 
easy class" is large. Every man looks with anxiety to the 
future for himself, or his children. The avenues to employ- 
ment are blocked against those whose means are insufficient 
to command <' connection," and therefore is it that great sums 
are paid for <' good wills ;" for shares in established houses ; 
and for appointments to office. The necessary consequence 
of such a condition of affairs is the existence throughout 
society of power on the one hand, and of feebleness and 
servility on the other. The labourer must vote as he is or- 
dered, or he maybe ejected from his cottage: and he must be 
grateful in the highest degree for the allotment of a quarter 
of an acre that he may cultivate on payment of an exorbitant 
rent. The operative must submit, for employment is scarce. 
The clerk must bend, for clerkships are not abundant. 

She is now, however, turning her attention homeward. She 
is making railroads, and bringing into cultivation better soils: 
and each step in that direction will tend to give to the la- 
bourer increased hope in the future, while to the landlord it 
will give increased confidence that it rests with himself alone 
to secure not only a continuance of the present income from 
his property, but a steady and rapid increase. With each 
step, we shall find man more and more acquiring power over 
himself, and greater self-reliance, essential to the exten- 
sion of those feelings of liberality, benevolence and kindness, 
by which portions of British society have been so honourably 
distinguished. 

By no portion of the human race has peace been so steadily 
maintained as by the people of the United States, during 
the sixty years which followed the recognition of their inde- 
pendence, and in no country have wealth and population so 
rapidly grown. In none, therefore, does man exercise so 
much power over himself. In none prevails so universally 
confidence in themselves, and in the future.* Hope ani- 

* " Society says to the poor man in America, labour ! and at eighteen 
years you will earn more, labourer as you are, than a captain can do in Eu- 



MAN. 257 

mates all to industry, and stimulates the foculties for the 
invention of machinery for increasing the productiveness of 
labour,* while prompting all to union for the promotion of 
works of public usefulness, of charity and benevolence. f In 
none is there so little religious jealousy, for there are no 
spoils to be divided. In none so little jealousy of station, 
for all feel that they themselves can rise. In none so little 
jealousy of property, for all have or can obtain it.J In 
none does there exist a recognition so universal of the supe- 
rior claims of talent, for all read. In none so little deference 



rope. You will live in abundance, you will be well clothed, well lodged, and 
you will be able to accumulate capital. Be assiduous, sober, and religious, 
and you will find a devoted and submissive companion ; you will have a home 
better provided with comforts than that of many of the employers in Europe. 
From a workman you will become an employer ; you will have apprentices 
and domestics in your turn ; you will have credit and abundant means ; you 
will become a manufacturer or great farmer ; you will speculate and become 
rich ; you will build a town, and give it your name ; you will become a mem- 
ber of the legislature of your state, or alderman of your city, and then mem- 
ber of Congress; your son will have the same chance of being president, as 
the son of the President himself. Labour ! and if the chance of business 
should be against you, and you should fall, you will speedily rise again, for 
here failure is not considered like a wound received in battle ; it will not cause 
you to loose esteem or confidence, provided you have been always temperate 
and regular, a good Christian, and faithful husband." — Chevalier. 

* « Tall, slender, and well-made, the American appears built expressly for 
labour. He has not his equal in the world for rapidity of work. None so 
readily fall into new modes of practice. He is always ready to change them, 
or his tools, or even his trade. He is a machinist in his soul. * * * 
There is not a countryman in Connecticut or Massachusetts, who has not in- 
vented his machine." — Chevalier. 

■f "■ The Americans have great earnestness of character. * * * Only 
let them fully apprehend the importance of an object, and you will see them 
move to it with a directness of mind, and a scorn of sacrifices, which would 
surprise weaker natures. * * * j know of no country where there are 
more examples of beneficence and magnificence. The rich will act nobly 
out of their abundance ; and the poor will act as nobly out of their penury." — 
Visit to the .American Churches. 

" In no country in the world do the citizens make such exertions for the 
common weal ; and I am acquainted with no people which has established 
schools as numerous and as efficacious, places of worship better suited to 
the wants of the inhabitants, or roads kept in better repair." — De Tocque- 
ville. 

t <' In America, those complaints against property in general, which are so 

2 K 



258 MAN. 

to authority, for all think.* In none does there exist so 
universally the feeling of self-respect. f In none is avarice 
so rarely seen. J In none are the contributions of money 
and service, in aid of literary and scientific, religious and 
charitable institutions :§ of schools, colleges, libraries, hos- 

frequent in Europe, are never heard, because in America there are no pau- 
pers ; and as every one has property of his ovv^n to defend, every one recognises 
the principle upon vi^hich he holds it." — De Tocqueville. 

* " The inhabitants of the United States are never fettered by the axioms 
of their professions; they escape from all the prejudices of their present sta- 
tion ; they are not more attached to one line of operation than to another; 
they are not more prone to employ an old method than a new one ; they 
have no rooted habits, and they easily shake off the influence which the 
habits of other nations might exercise upon their minds, from a conviction 
that their country is unlike any other, and that its situation is without a pre- 
cedent in the world. America is a land of wonders, in which every thing is 
in constant motion, and every movement seems an improvement. The idea 
of novelty is there indissolubly connected with the idea of amelioration. No 
natural boundary seems to be set to the efforts of man, and what is not yet 
done, is only what he has not yet attempted to do." — De Tocqueville. 

■f " The mass of the American people are more fully initiated than the 
mass of European population, in what relates to the dignity of man, or at 
least, in regard to their own dignity. The American workman is full of self- 
respect, which he manifests not only by an extreme susceptibility, and by his 
repugnance to use the term master, which he replaces by that of employer, but 
also by much greater good faith, exactitude, and scrupuloiisness in his transac- 
tions. He is exempt from the vices of the slave, such as lying and stealing, 
which are so frequent among our labourers, particularly those of our cities 
and factories." — Chevalier. 

t " It might be thought, that among a people so profoundly absorbed by 
the care of their material interests, misers would abound. Such is not the 
case." — Clievalier. 

"The universal moving power with an x\merican is the desire of wealth, 
but it would be to deceive ourselves to suppose that he is not capable of pe- 
cuniary sacrifices. He has the habit of giving, and he practises it without 
regret, more frequently than ourselves, and more largely also; but his munifi- 
cence and his gifts are governed by reason and by calculation. It is neither 
enthusiasm nor passion that opens his purse." — Chevalier. 

§ " There is no village in the United States without its church, no deno- 
mination of Christians in any city without its house of prayer, no congrega- 
tion in any of the new settlements without the spiritual consolation of a pas- 
tor." — Grund. 

" Whatever may be the actual use of the means to be found in this coun- 
try, certainly those means, as they contribute to supply the church with a 
well-trained and efficient ministry, excel any thing which we have at home. 
The student for the sacred calling gets a better classical and general education 
than he would get in our dissenting colleges, while his professional education 
is not inferior; and he gets a theological education unspeakably better than 



MAN. 259 

pitals, asylums for the deaf, the dumb, the blind,* the 
youthful and the adult criminal ;f so great : because in 
none is land so powerless, and in none is man so strong or 
so united.J In none does there exist so strong a tendency 
towards bringing into activity all the vast treasures of the 
earth ; because in none is the capitalist, large and small, so 
free to invest his accumulations at his pleasure. In none is 
the labourer so free to select his employer. In none is the 
employer so free to discharge his labourer. In none is the 
reward of labour so great. In none are fleets and armies 
so small : and in none does there exist so strong an induce- 
ment to the application of all the powers of body and of 
mind, in the manner deemed likely most to contribute to the 
advancement of physical, moral, intellectual, and political 
condition. § 



Oxford or Cambridge would afford him, though his classical advantages 
would be less." — Visit to the American Churches. 

" I have seen a list of bequests and donations made during the last thirty 
years, for the benefit of religious, charitable, and literary institutions, in the 
State of Massachusetts alone, and they amounted to no less a sum than 
$6,000,000, or more than £1,000,000 sterling."— iyeW. 

* " It appears doubtful whether the education of the blind has ever been 
carried so far as at present in the United States ; and there is one set of par- 
ticulars, at least, in which we would do well to learn from the new country." 
— Marlineau. 

I " In America, the progress of the reform of prisons has been of a charac- 
ter essentially religious. Men, prompted by religious feelings, have conceived 
and accomplished every thing which has been undertaken ; they were not left 
alone; but their zeal gave the impulse to all, and thus excited in all minds 
the ardour which animated theirs." — De Beaumont and De Tocqueville. 

" A multitude of charitable persons, who are not ministers by profession, 
sacrifice, nevertheless, a great part of their time to the moral reformation of 
criminals." — Ibid. 

t " In no country does crime more rarely elude punishment. The reason 
is, that every one conceives himself to be interested in furnishing evidence of 
the act committed, and of stopping the delinquent. During my stay in the 
United States, I witnessed the spontaneous formation of committees for the 
pursuit and prosecution of a man who had committed a great crime in a cer- 
tain county. In Europe, a criminal is an unhappy being who is struggling 
for his life against the ministers of justice, while the population is merely a 
spectator of the conflict : in America, he is looked upon as the enemy of the 
human race, and the whole of mankind is against him." — De TorquevUle. 

§ "In spite of the constant influx of uneducated and pennyless adventurers 



260 MAN. 

We are told, that " God hath made man upright, but 
he has sought out many inventions." Man was made 
upright, and man is upright, when permitted so to be. 
Throughout the world, he is disposed to labour for the 
maintenance and improvement of his condition, wherever 
he sees that such improvement follows labour : but unhap- 
pily there has existed at every period, and in every portion of 
the world, a class to whom labour was disagreeable, and who 
preferred living on that of others, paying themselves for 
performing the duties of government. In some cases, they 
exercise greater, and in others less, power over those by 
whom they are surrounded ; and in all cases, the vices of the 
slave are found existing in the precise ratio of that power : 
while with its diminution we find them invariably becoming 
replaced by the virtuous habits of freemen. England has 
increased more rapidly in wealth and population than the 
rest of Europe, and, therefore it is that there those vices 
are found least existing : while France has remained almost 
stationary, and, therefore it is that in that country hope 
scarcely exists, while fear, and jealousy, and cruelty, and 
avarice so much abound. 

That such is the case is not the fault of the people 
but of the government, which deprives them of the power, 
and the hope, of improvement. Great numbers of French- 
men have crossed the Atlantic to settle in the United 
States, where they have manifested the possession of all the 
qualities requisite for excellent citizens, and so would they 
do at home, had they hope to animate them to exertion. 
The Union possesses no class of citizens more orderly, in- 
dustrious, and respectable, than those derived from France. 
The same, however, may be said of the natives of every 
clime. The Englishman brings with him the habit of strikes, 
turn-outs, and combinations, but it passes gradually away, 

from Europe, I believe it would be impossible to find 5,000,000 in any other 
region of the globe whose average moral, social, and intellectual condition 
stands so high." — J-XjeU. 



MAN. 261 

as he finds that he has rights, and has also the power to 
maintain them. The German labours and thrives every- 
where. The Irishman brings with him his party feuds : and 
Catholic and Orangemen maintain, for a time, the cordial 
hatred engendered by long years of oppression on one hand 
and unquiet endurance on the other : but in time this, too, 
passes away, and all become Americans, the causes of hate 
forgotten. So would it everywhere be, were men permitted 
to cultivate the land in peace, and to enjoy the fruits of their 
labour ; but so long as large armies and fleets are to be 
maintained : so long as the major part of the produce of the 
land shall continue to be consumed by those who do not 
labour : and so long as men shall be compelled to cultivate 
poor soils when they might have rich ones : virtue and happi- 
ness cannot increase. The people, everywhere, love peace, 
and everywhere they desire to unite with each other. 
Their rulers, everywhere, love war, and preparation for war. 

The PAST says to the landlord of the present : — If you 
would desire to see your property increase in value : strive 
for the maintenance of peace, that population and wealth 
may grow ; and that habits of union, and feelings of bene- 
volence and kindness, may prevail throughout the society 
of which you are a member. 

To the labourer it says : If you would acquire the 
power of union with your fellows for the promotion of feel- 
ings of mutual kindness and benevolence : if you would 
acquire confidence in the future : if you would be animated 
by hope : strive for the maintenance of peace. 



262 MAN AND HIS HELPMATE. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

MAN AND HIS HELPMATE. 

The savage derives his subsistence from the poorest soils. 
He roams abroad, and shoots the deer: but leaves to his un- 
happy helpmate the task of carrying it home on her shoulders, 
and that of preparing it for his consumption. He helps him- 
self, and v^hen there is sufficient for both, she may eat. 
When it is otherwise, she may starve. She is his slave, ever 
ready to prostitute herself to the stranger for a mouthful of 
food, a bead, or a nail. 

The man who cultivates the rich soils of the earth sees in 
woman the source of his greatest happiness. The companion 
of his hours of enjoyment, he turns instinctively to her for so- 
lace in the hours of affliction. He labours, that she may 
rest. He economizes, that she may enjoy the comforts and 
luxuries of life : while she regards him as the chosen partnc 
of her existence, and the father of her children ; and, as 
such, entitled to exclusive possession of her affections. 

If we trace the history of woman in Athens, we may see 
the gradual decline of her influence as incessant wars brought 
poverty and depopulation, and as the cultivation of the fertile 
soils was more and more abandoned ; until we meet, on the one 
hand, the Hetcercz^ constituting an important element of so- 
ciety : and, on the other, the female slave, engaged in the 
severest labours, and not unfrequently perishing for want of 
food : while abroad, women and children are involved with 
husbands and fathers in the atrocious punishments that fol- 
low resistance to the orders of a rapacious military aristo- 



MAN AND HIS HELPMATE. 263 

cracy, eager to divide among themselves the plunder of 
subject cities. 

If we look to Rome in the prosperous days when the fer- 
tile lands of Latiura, cultivated by their free owners, gave 
food to numerous cities, we may see woman respected, and 
respecting herself. If we seek her in the days when popu- 
lation had declined, and cultivation had been abandoned to 
slaves, and when Italy had ceased to afford food for her 
greatly diminished numbers, we find her type in Messalina 
and Agrippina, Poppoea and Faustina. 

In modern Italy, with the decay of population and of 
wealth, we see thousands of women, who have witnessed the 
massacre of their husbands and their sons, driven abroad, to 
perish of starvation, or subjected to the last outrages by 
hordes of wandering barbarians : Franks or Germans : while 
in Lucrece Borgia, or Beatrice Cenci, we find the type of 
woman in the higher ranks of life. In the poorest parts of 
Italy : those in which land is least divided : may now be found 
the wealthiest women: while the wife of the poor serf slaves 
in the field to obtain a small allowance of the poorest food. 
Increasing inequality of condition, and increasing crime, are 
thus the invariable attendants of poverty and the abandon- 
ment of the fertile soils of the earth. If w^e desire other evi- 
dences of this, w^e may turn to France in the terrific days of 
the Merovingians : and there we find the sex a slave to the 
worst passions of men, the subjects of female barbarians occu- 
pying thrones, who are known to history by the names of Fre- 
degonda and Brunechild : women almost unmatched for crime. 

Exhausted by wars of conquest under Charlemagne, we 
find France a prey to invasion from every side, by barbarians 
who respected neither age nor sex. The cultivation of the 
land was abandoned, and the people who escaped the sword 
perished of starvation. Poverty and depopulation gave birth 
to the barbarism of the feudal system, for which the world 
stands her debtor. With each step in its progress men 
were forced to resort to poorer soils : and wilb each we see 



264 MAN AND HIS HELPMATE. 

the poorer freeman gradually losing control over his actions, 
and becoming daily more and more the slave of his lord. 
With each, we see the honour of his wife and daughter be- 
coming less and less secure ; until at length we find the droit 
de ja7nbageetdecuissageuui'verSci[]ysiSseTted,3.nd so generally 
exercised that the eldest born of the tenant is held more 
honourable than the others : it being probable that it was the 
child of the lord. Concubinage becomes universal, and 
bastardy ceases to cause any feeling of disgrace. Dissolute 
queens provide mistresses for their husbands : while princes, 
styled "the good," or « great," number their concubines by 
dozens : and hdtards and grand hdtards fill the highest oflfice 
of state, and monopolize the great dignities of the church : 
or distinguish themselves as ecorcheurs^ or flayers of the un- 
fortunate peasant, whose wife perishes of starvation while 
they accumulate vast fortunes, and take rank among the good 
and great. Later, queens find in the easy virtue of their 
maids of honour, security for the adhesion of their partisans : 
and gentlemen find in rape one of the inducements to the in- 
vasion of the unfortunate lands of Italy or Spain, Germany 
or the Netherlands. Cities and towns are sacked : and no- 
bles and gentlemen gorge themselves with plunder, while 
women and children ask in vain for food. Titled prostitutes 
next direct the aflfairs of state, and women suffer at the stake 
for errors of opinion : while wives and daughters of the 
poor serfs labour in the field, seeking in vain from the mise- 
rable soils they cultivate the means of supporting life. Un- 
ceasing wars and universal poverty are accompanied by 
excessive inequality, and by the dissoluteness of manners 
that invariably attends the absence of all control on the part 
of the many, and the consciousness of the possession of un- 
limited power on the part of the few. Duchesses now pub- 
lish to the world the histories of their amours, and princesses 
of the blood are honoured by the notice of Montespans. 
Queens and kept mistresses are compagnons du voyage, 
and Brinvilliers furnishes poisons to enable amorous wives 



MAN AND HIS HELPMATE. 265 

to change their husbands. Thus, by degrees, we reach the 
period when incest ceases to be a crime, and the represen- 
tative of majesty takes his mistresses indifferently from among 
the daughters of others, or his own. The pare aux cerfs, or 
royal academy for prostitutes, maintained at the cost of mil- 
lions collected by taxes on salt and all other of the necessa- 
ries of life, next occupies the time and mind of the sovereign : 
while a du Barri holds the helm of state. Arriving at the 
period of the Revolution, w^e see poissardes heading insurrec- 
tions, w^hile queens, princesses, and duchesses, are dragged 
to prison, preparatory to being made to feel the weight of the 
revolutionary axe : and indiscriminate murder : noyades and 
fusillades : sweeps off by thousands miserable men, w^hose 
W'ives and daughters, reduced, perhaps, from affluence, are 
forced to beg their bread from door to door, or seek a refuge 
from starvation in the horrors of public prostitution. 

In nothing is the brutalizing effect of perpetual war more 
fully exhibited than in the total want of respect for female 
life or honour, that is shown in every portion of the history 
of France. The '' hons bouchers^^ of Charles the Bold spare 
neither women nor children. The Bourguignons and Ar- 
magnaes spare none. The Turkish allies of France sweep 
off the women and children of Italy by thousands into cap- 
tivity. On the other hand, Diana of Poictiers is more con- 
spicuous in history than her royal, and more youthful, lover: 
and the head of the house of Bourbon is rarely mentioned but 
in company with his mistress, la belle Gabrielle: while thou- 
sands feel for the sorrows of the unhappy La Fayette, who 
w^ould find it difficult to bestow a thought upon the unfortu- 
nate women of Milan, Mantua, or Naples, Ghent, or Bruges, 
whose husbands and sons are mowed down by thousands ; 
while they themselves are made to endure the last indignities 
to which their sex is liable, and their daughters are forced to 
seek in prostitution the means of obtaining food. The his- 
tory of that unfortunate country is one of perpetual poverty ; 
and a record of total inability to resort for support to any but 
2L 23 



266 MAN AND HIS HELPMATE. 

the poor soils : and the man who derives his subsistence 
from those soils is always a barbarian : and not the less so 
because he chances to wear a cocked hat and feathers. Ex- 
treme inequality in the condition of the different portions of 
the female sex, is one of the characteristics of barbarism : 
and in every portion of the history of France is exhibited the 
same inequality that is now shown in the poor girl who, un- 
able to purchase fuel, sleeps in the day and works by night 
in the stable that she may derive from the proximity of ani- 
mals a supply of heat, on the one hand : and the vast fortune 
of the Duchesse de Praslin, on the other.* 

If we look at the condition of the sex in the present day, 
we see the results of perpetual war, in the fact that women 
still labour in the field : in the aversion to marriage on the 
part of the men : and in the absolute necessity for the dot. 
An unportioned woman has no chance of marriage : while 
those who have portions see their husbands but for a moment, 
before forming a connection that is intended to last for life. 
Marriages de convenance are universal, and frequent adultery 
is the necessary consequence : while tens of thousands of wo- 
men see no immorality in the formation of temporary unions. 
Foundling hospitals enable them to dispose of their offspring, 
to perish by hundreds in the hands of hireling nurses paid 
out of the proceeds of taxes imposed upon the honest and 
virtuous labourer, whose unremitted exertions are insufficient 
to enable him to procure a miserable subsistence for his wife 
and his children : and who lives on, a creature without hope, 
while mistresses and female stock- gamblers, titled and un- 
titled, have boxes at the opera, and sport their gay equipages 
at the Jete of Longchamps : while queens and princesses have 
palaces that count almost by dozens, and young ladies, 
just married, and become enceinte^ publish the fact through 

* " The trousseau of Mademoiselle Martignon, who is going to marry the 
Baron de Montmorenci, is to cost a hundred thousand crowns ($1 1 0,000). 
There are to be a hundred dozen of chemises ; and so on, in proportion." — 
French Newspaper, 



MAN AND HIS HELPMATE. 267 

out the kingdom, to be received as cause for rejoicing by the 
poor man who sees his wife or daughter dying for want of 
food. Under such circumstances, it is not extraordinary that 
in meeting three young Parisians, we should have reason 
to feel assured of the middle one being a bastard : that being 
the proportion of illegitimate to legitimate births. 

In England, the position of the sex has been widely dif- 
ferent. More than any other portion of Europe has the soil 
of that country been exempt from the horrors of war, the 
effect of which is seen in the fact that the cottage of the la- 
bourer figures in every portion of the English landscape, 
affording the strongest evidence of the long existence of in- 
ternal peace. The husbandman has been there exempt from 
the necessity of seeking protection within the w^alls of the 
town. There he has, more than in almost any part of Eu- 
rope, been enabled to economize the machinery of exchange 
by living on the land that he cultivated, and thus has saved 
the cost of transporting himself to his work, and that of trans- 
porting the products of his labour to his place of residence : 
and, still more important, he has had a place upon which he 
might bestow those hours and half hours that in France are 
necessarily wasted. He has had a home of his own, and 
having the thing, he has made the word to express the 
idea. 

In no part of Europe has the feeling of perfect individu- 
ality existed to the same extent as in England, and that it has 
there existed has been due to the fact that there, more than 
elsewhere, has internal peace existed, permitting man to place 
himself on the spot upon which his labours w^re to be ap- 
plied. The home of the individual man required a mistress, 
and the choice of the man was influenced, necessarily, by 
the fact that she was to be his companion in his home, dis- 
tant perhaps from the homes of other men, and that he was 
to be dependent upon her kindness and affection for the hap- 
piness of his life, and for the care of his children. Peace 
and the growth of wealth tended therefore to give to the 



268 MAN AND HIS HELPMATE. 

weak woman power over the strong man : whereas war has, 
in all ages, tended to render her his victim. 

With each step in the progress of wealth and population, 
we may see an improvement in the condition of woman, from 
the day when powerful barons contested the rights of the 
heiress of Henry I., and the poor Saxon neif was sold to 
slavery in Ireland ; and that when the daughter of Torquil 
Wolfganger presided over the revels of Front de Bceuf; 
to those in which the throne was filled by the masculine 
Elizabeth : but with the following century came a long pe- 
riod of internal war and waste, to be followed by one 
of extreme demoralization ; that of the reigns of Nell 
Gwynn and the Duchesses of Portsmouth and Cleveland. 
Royal and noble bastards then abounded. From the Revolu- 
tion of 1688, until we approach the close of the last century, 
wealth and population gradually increased, and the people 
were better fed, better clothed, and better lodged than in any 
former period : the effect of which may be seen in the im- 
proved condition of the sex. Many of the abominations 
which marked the early years of the century had passed 
away before the commencement of the great war. Kings 
ceased to have mistresses to aid in the management of the 
affairs of state, and fleet marriages became less common. 
With that war and its enormous waste, we find, however, a 
new state of things. Thefow now become immensely rich, 
while the many become poor. The price of corn rises, and 
that of man falls. Landholders become too great to manage 
their own affairs, and they must have great tenants, with 
great farms. Cottages disappear, and almshouses become 
filled. Labour ceases to yield food, and women seek to have 
bastards that they may obtain allowances, and thereby obtain 
husbands. Indiscriminate intercourse becomes so common 
as in some degree to arrest the growth of population ;* while 

* It was stated twelve or fifteen years since by a clergyman : we think the 
Rev. Mr. Cunningham: that the morals of his parish were improving; and 
the reason given for this belief was, that bastards had become more numerous, 
from which fact he inferred that indiscriminate intercourse had become less 
common. 



MAN Ai\D HIS HELPMATE. 269 

thousands of children perish of neglect and want of food. 
Great club-houses, and houses of prostitution increase in a 
ratio corresponding to each other, and thus we find that each 
step in the progress of war and waste : necessarily accompa- 
nied wdth growing inequality : is attended with a deteriora- 
tion of the condition of the sex. 

With the long continued peace and the consequent growth 
of wealth, there has been a gradual improvement in the con- 
dition of the sex, in England, but bondagers, i. e., female 
field-labourers, still figure in the leases of Northumbrian land- 
holders ; half-starved women are yet conspicuous among the 
habitues of gin-shops : sales of wives with halters round 
their necks have not yet disappeared : women and girls still 
labour in coal mines, and sometimes in a state of perfect 
nudity : and adultery is not unfrequently the consequence 
of marriages in which property and not inclination is con- 
sulted. A state of society in which exists inequality to the 
extent to which it is found in England, is not favourable to 
female honour. Heavy taxes tend to produce poverty, and 
mischievous regulations bar men from finding employment, 
and hence marriage is far less universal than it ought to be. 
Taxes and regulations tend to produce a large class with mo- 
ney to spend, and with no employment for time, and hence 
a disposition for gallantry that would not otherwise exist. 
The steady and regular application of time or talent is 
the best security for morals, and that is invariably seen 
most to exist where labour yields the largest reward. All 
men would marry, if all could do so with safety to them- 
selves. In such a state of things, the exceptions are only 
sufficient to prove the rule. The universal possession of 
property is the best guarantee for the security of property ; 
and the universal possession of wives and families is the best 
security for morals ; for husbands and fathers are interested 
in the repression of every thing tending to promote immo- 
rality. 

In Scotland, improvement would appear to be less certain. 

23* 



270 MAN AND HIS HELPMATE. 

There, entails increase in number. There, sheep have taken 
the place of men whose cottages have been burned, and who 
have been compelled to seek refuge within towns and cities : 
and with their homes the sex has been compelled to lose 
the pride of female honour. Glasgow presents a scene of 
wretchedness rarely equalled among civilized men, and houses 
of prostitution exist in the ratio of one to twenty- eight ! 
Such are the results of the increasing power of land, and 
diminishing power of man. 

Perpetual peace abroad and at home has given to the 
United States constantly increasing wealth, and every man 
has been thereby enabled to feel that he may marry without 
hesitation. All, therefore, do marry; and hence the rapid 
increase of population : and hence the general morality. 
Bastardy is rare. If we seek to find it, it must be among 
the people who cultivate the poorer soils. Thirty years 
since, it abounded among the Germans of Pennsylvania, 
who raised small crops from the heavy clay; and then women 
laboured in the fields : but it has gradually diminished as 
population and wealth have grown, and as they have been 
enabled to combine the inferior lime with the superior clay, 
and have thus obtained a better soil. Receding gradually, 
it may yet be found in the counties more distant from the 
city, where a scattered population still obtain small crops 
from poor soils. It may be found in all those counties in 
which poor farmers sell all their hay, and buy no lime. In 
general, however, it exists to a very small extent ; and the 
sex, respecting themselves in a higher degree, are respected, 
in a degree unknown to other portions of the globe. Dowry 
is rarely thought of.* Marriages de convenance scarcely 

* « We buy our wives with our fortunes, or we sell ourselves to them for 
their dowries. The American chooses her, or rather offers himself to her for 
her beauty, her intelligence, and the qualities of her heart; it is the only 
dowry which he seeks. Thus, while we make of that which is most sacred 
a matter of business, these traders affect a delicacy, and an elevation of sen- 
timent, which would have done honour to the most perfect models of chi- 
valry." — Chevalier. 



MAN AND HIS HELPMATE. 271 

exist. The marriage tie is held sacred,* and all because 
each man has, or can have, his own home, within which 
he is sole master : except so far as he defers its management 
to its mistress, whose control, within doors, is most com- 
plete ; but there she stops. f Everywhere is manifested to- 
wards the sex: old and young: rich and poor: high and 
low : a degree of deference elsewhere unthought of | They 
travel, unprotected, for thousands of miles, fearing no intru- 
sion : and encountering none of those discomforts to which 
they are exposed in every part of Europe. § With marriage, 
the task of providing for the family is assumed by the husband ; 
and woman then is left to the performance of the duties of the 
household, and the care of her children: and everywhere the 
labour incident to the performance of those duties is lightened 
by improved machinery. || In no part of the Union, however, 
is she seen to the same advantage as in Massachusetts, where 
man derives from the cultivation of a naturally sterile soil re- 

* " You may estimate the morality of any population, when you have ascer- 
tained that of the women ; and one cannot contemplate American society 
without admiration for the respect which there encircles the tie of marriage. 
The same sentiment existed to a like degree among no nations of antiquity ; 
and the existing societies of Europe, in their corruption, have not even a con- 
ception of such purity of morals." — 'ilf. de Beaumont. 

" The marriage tie is more sacred among American workmen than among 
the middle classes of various countries of Europe." — Chevalier. 

■j- " Not only does the American mechanic and farmer relieve, as much as 
possible, his wife from all severe labour, all disagreeable employments, but 
there is also, in relation to them, and to women in general, a disposition to 
oblige, that is unknown among us, even in men who pique themselves upon 
cultivation of mind and literary education." — CJtevalier. 

i " One of the first peculiarities that must strike a foreigner ia the United 
States is the deference paid universally to the sex, without regard to rank or 
station." — Lyell. 

§ " We have allowed the administration of the customs to adopt practices 
unworthy of a civilized nation. It is inexplicable that they should have im- 
posed upon the French, who believe themselves the most polished nation of 
the earth, rules, in virtue of which their wives and daughters are personally 
examined and felt, in filthy holes and corners, by female furies. These scan- 
dalous brutalities of the agents of the treasury are inexcusable, for they pro- 
duce nothing to the revenue." — Chevalier. 

II "The inventive spirit of the people of New England, and of their de- 
scendants throughout the Union, is displayed in the production of machinery 
for economizing the time and labour of their wives." — Chevalier. 



272 MAN an;) I:'.s :]::l?mate. 

turns to labour unknown to those who cultivate the prairies of 
the West : and where may be seen, congregating in thousands, 
female operatives among whom bastardy is unknown. The 
greatest of all the moral phenomena of the world is to be 
found in the city of Lowell, and the enlightened traveller 
will find in its examination abundant compensation for a fail- 
ure of his visit to Niagara.* 

With each step in our progress south, men cultivate poorer 
soils, and the power of combination diminishes ; and with 
each such step the value of female labour, and the power of 
woman to provide for and defend herself, diminishes, until 
we find her and her children becoming the property of an- 
other. That all may become free, and that woman every- 
where may acquire power over her own actions, determin- 
ing for herself who she will marry and who she will not ; 
that she may everywhere obtain a home in which to devote 
herself to the performance of those duties for which she was 
intended ; the happy wife becoming the mother of children 
educated to be useful to themselves, their parents, and socie- 
ty : it is essential that wealth should be permitted to increase. 
It does increase most rapidly where men cultivate the most 
fertile soils ; and that those soils may be cultivated, com- 
bination of action is indispensable. The consumer must take 
his place by the side of the producer. With each step of 
increase in the density of population, the power of combina- 
tion increases, the consumer and the producer being enabled 



* « The factories at Lowell are not only on a great scale, but have been so 
managed as to yield high profits, a fact which should be impressed on the 
mind of every foreigner who visits them, lest after admiring the gentility of 
manner and address of the women, he should go away with the idea that he 
had been seeing a model mill, or a set of gentlemen and ladies playing at a 
factory for their amusement." — Lyell. 

" Morning and evening, and at meal times, seeing them passing in the 
streets, well dressed, and again, seeing suspended on the walls of the facto- 
ries, among the vases of flowers, and the shrubs which they cultivate, their 
scarfs, and their shawls, and the hoods of green silk with which they envelope 
their heads, to secure them from the heat and dust in walking, I said to my- 
self. This is not Manchester." — Chevalien 



MAN AND HIS IIELPMATK. 273 

more and more to place themselves by the side of each other. 
Population and wealth increase most rapidly where women 
are most chaste, and where they are most chaste they are 
most valued: whereas, where neither population nor wealth 
is permitted to increase, woman is, and must ever be, a slave 
and a prostitute ; and man a barbarian, cultivating the poor- 
est soils. 

The PAST says to the sovereign of the present : «« If you 
desire that woman should occupy the position for which she 
\vas intended by her Creator: cultivate peace." 

To the landlord it says : " If you desire that your lands 
shall become valuable : avoid war, and permit wealth to in- 
crease, that woman may be chaste and population grow." 

To the labourer it says : " If you desire that the honour of 
your wife and daughter be respected : labour to promote the 
maintenance of peace." 

To w^oman it says : " If you w^ould be a happy wife, mis- 
tress of your own home, and surrounded by your children : 
love those who cultivate peace." 



274 MAN AND HIS FAMILY. 



CHAPTER IX. 



MAN AND HIS FAMILY. 



The savage, deriving from the poor soils a wretched and 
precarious subsistence, and compelled to change his place 
from day to day, sees in the birth of a child but an addition 
to his burthens, and but for the affection of the mother, few, 
particularly of the weaker sex, would live a single day. 
The child, in turn, arrived at maturity, sees in the parent 
but a useless consumer of the small stock of food, and 
leaves him to perish in the desert ; or exposes him on the 
river bank, there to die the lingering death of starvation, or 
to become food for tigers : or, more mercifully, buries him 
alive, and thus terminates at once a life of tyranny over 
others, that has been productive of little but wretchedness to 
himself. 

The man who cultivates the rich soils of the earth rejoices 
in the birth of his child. The great machine in the prepa- 
ration of which he is engaged, yields to his labour a daily 
increasing recompense, and with each addition to his family 
he finds a more rapid increase of his wealth. Food increases 
more rapidly than mouths to consume it : and with each 
addition to their number, he finds himself enabled to devote 
more and more of his attention to the study of their cha- 
racters and the formation of their minds, with a view to 
making them good sons, preparatory to their becoming 
good and useful citizens. He unites with his neighbours 
for the establishment of schools, and colleges, and libra- 
ries ; and he economizes his own expenses, that they may 
want none of the training required to enable them to 
fill, usefully to themselves and beneficially to the commu- 



MAN AND HIS FAMILY. 275 

nity, the station, be it what it may, in which they shall be 
placed. The child, in turn, desires to aid the parent. 
Arrived at manhood, he remembers that in his youth his 
feelings and his rights had been respected, and he now pays 
the debt incurred in infancy, respecting in his parent the 
rights that, in his turn, he would have respected in him- 
self. 

By nothing is the progress of mankind in population and 
wealth made more manifest than by the change in the relation 
of parent and child. In the infancy of cultivation the one is 
a tyrant and the other a slave ; but with each step in the pro 
gress of civilization, we find a tendency towards equality ot 
condition, each learning more and more to regard the other 
as a companion and fHend, differing in age, but equally 
labouring for the common good : the father granting to the 
son the benefit of his experience, while the son contri- 
butes as far as in his power lies, to the performance of the 
labours required for the great object of maintaining and im- 
proving their common condition. 

The Spartans lived on the produce of the poor soils, cul- 
tivated by slaves. The child, if unfit to become a warrior, 
w^as destroyed. If saved, it was the property of the State. 
The parent acquired no claims upon the affections of his son, 
and the latter, arrived at maturity, felt that he had no debt 
to pay. 

In the earlier and happier days of Rome, men drew large 
supplies of food from the rich soils, and then fathers and 
children were friends ; but with tyranny abroad comes tyranny 
at home, and the fierce warrior is seen exercising over his 
son the power of life and death. With the gradual progress 
of decline, family hatreds grow, and husbands and wives, 
fathers, and sons, and daughters, are seen engaged in deadly 
strife. With each step land becomes more and more con- 
solidated, and man becomes more weak : and with each is 
seen the growth of family hatred. Constantine murders 
his son. Constans, Constantius, and Constantine contend 



276 MAN AND HIS FAMILY. 

for the empire of the world : but as that empire diminishes 
in extent, we see mothers murdering sons, and brothers de- 
posing and blinding brothers, the bitterness of hate growling 
with the abandonment of the fertile lands, and the increasing 
worthlessness of the prize. 

Throughout the eastern world, where poor men cultivate 
the poorest soils, we see a perpetual series of family dis- 
cords. Fathers are deposed and blinded by their sons : 
sons are murdered by fathers : and brothers are assassi- 
nated by brothers. In the lower walks of life, we may 
see the poor Hindoo, old and unable to labour, exposed 
upon the banks of the Ganges by order of sons who, anxious 
to prevent increase in the number of useless mouths, destroy 
their own children : although surrounded by the most fertile 
lands, w^aiting but for the growth of population and of 
wealth to yield ample supplies of food and of all other of 
the necessaries of life. 

In modern Italy, with the diminution of population and 
of wealth, and the abandonment of the rich soils of the Cam- 
pagna, we see nunneries innumerable, filled with unwilling 
daughters forced to undergo a living death for the benefit of 
sons who indulge themselves in uncontrolled license among 
the unfortunate women of plundered towns and cities, driven 
to prostitution for the support of life. There, too, we find 
murders and poisonings among fathers, brothers, sons, and 
nephews. Poverty produces everywhere repulsion and hate, 
and where it exists family affection can but rarely find a 
place. 

In the rapidly growing Holland, and in the Netherlands of 
the middle ages, we meet a better state of things. There, 
increasing wealth facilitated the cultivation of the various 
soils, and the producer and consumer were enabled to place 
themselves side by side. Population grew, and with it the 
demand for labour. The parent saw in the child the future 
support of his age, and the child, grow^n to manhood, remem- 
bered the debt contracted in his youth. 



MAN AND HIS FAMILY. 277 

France, always at war, and always poor, has restricted 
herself to the cultivation of the worst soils. Her men were 
ever in the field, engaged in the duties of their vocation: 
in the Netherlands, Germany, or Hungary : in Spain, 
Piedmont, the Milanese, Naples, or Sicily : while at home 
their wives were the prey of bands of ecorcheurs, and of rob- 
bers of every nation, invited alternately by the Bourguignon 
and the Armagnac : the Leaguer and the royalist : the sove- 
reign and the rebellious noble. Of the children who w^ere 
born, a large proportion perished in their infancy. Wealth 
and population were sometimes stationary, while at other 
times they went backward. At others, they advanced, yet 
slowly : and the result of a long series of ages is, that she 
presents still to view a scattered population engaged in cul- 
tivating the poorest soils. The feeling of '< home" has had 
no existence. The foundling hospital repeats the story of 
Sparta. Few children are born, and of them but one-half 
attain maturity, then to be taken from their parents, to seek, 
in the fields of Germany, of Russia, or of Algeria, the means 
of subsistence : and that at the moment when the habits of 
life are to become fixed. The parent hopes little from the 
son, whose first duty is to that portion of society which governs 
the rest, and calls itself "the State." He does, therefore, 
little for him. He gives him hard work, and no instruction.* 



* " Frugality in Nantes, with the labouring classes, is the eifect of necessi- 
ty more than virtue. Drunkenness is common, and temperance is almost a 
stranger to them. In the country it is nearly as bad ; nine out of ten of the 
little farmers who come to this market, Wednesdays and Saturdays, and par- 
ticularly at the fairs, return home in a state of intoxication. The life led by 
them when on military duty, from the age of twenty to twenty-eight, most 
certainly demoralizes them. * * To prevent the increase and lessen the 
state of disorder into which the greater part of the labouring class and me- 
chanics of Nantes has fallen, a number of master tradesmen and proprietors 
of factories will not employ those men who do not agree to allow a certain 
sum weekly to be retained from their wages for the use of the wife and fami- 
ly The example spreads, and will, no doubt, become more general ; but this 
circumstance also shows forth, in strong colours, the immoral state of the 
working class in France." — Report on La Loire Infcricurc, bij H. Newman, H, 
B. M. Consul, to the Commissioners on the Poor Laws. 

24 



278 MAN AND HIS FAMILY. 

The son, in turn, remembers the lessons of his youth. He 
neglects his parent, and tyrannizes over his child.* As a 
natural consequence, crime in families abounds. Poverty 
instigates to murder, and parents perish by the hands of chil- 
dren by descent or marriage : wives by those of husbands, 
and husbands by those of wives, to an extent unknown in 
the other countries of Europe : the natural result of unceasing 
w^ar and waste. It is not, however, to the lower sphere of 
life alone that we must look for such events. Extreme in- 
equality of condition tends to the production of crime among 
the highest as well as among the most lowly. The starving 
wretch seeks food on the highway, while the marshal seeks 
in the plunder of cities the means with which to indulge his 
passion for display. Both are equally criminal, and both 
equally the offspring of war. The world now rings with the 
Praslin tragedy, but thousands of cases less patent to the 
world, might be produced to show how small is the extent 
to which the feeling of attachment to home, or family, exists 
throughout the population of France. The system forbids 
its existence. 

England has grown rich and populous. She has cultivated 
far better soils, and there has the feeling of attachment to 
home and family been more fully exhibited than in most other 
portions of Europe. Nevertheless, the provisions for main- 
taining the concentration of land, by which the progress of 
cultivation has been so much arrested, have equally tended 
to discourage the growth of harmony in families. The father 
feels himself a life-renter, and he is jealous of the rights of 
his son. The son watches the movements of his father, and 
a chancery injunction stays the parent engaged in the com- 

* "Experience proves that most workmen, who are fathers of families, will 
only consent to send their children to school during the years when they can earn 
absolutely nothing, and that they are withdrawn as soon as their weak arms 
will enable them to earn a few centimes, and that it is to this deplorable abuse 
of paternal power, goaded by poverty, that we should attribute the moral and 
physical weakness that is here exhibited at all stages of life." — Report of the 
Prefect of the Department of the North. 



MAN AND HIS FAMILY. 279 

mission of acts of waste. Younger sons see in the elder 
brother a rich man, made so by the accident of priority of 
birth, and they feel themselves to be poor and dependent on 
his bounty. Wives become poor at the death of husbands, 
while sons are made rich. Mothers of great sons spend their 
last years in the great almshouse for decayed nobles, Hamp- 
ton Court.* The system retards the development of the 
powers of the earth, and the growth of intellect : and pre- 
vents the existence of family affection : and all because it 
tends to the maintenance of inequality of condition. To 
that inequality it is due that we see so great a body of the 
<' uneasy class" of younger sons side by side with vast 
wealth. Thence arises the general thirst for office among 
men whose abilities would qualify them to work with advan- 
tage to themselves, their families, and their countrymen, 
were a way opened for them ; but who are compelled to soli- 
cit favours at home, or to seek in the cultivation of the poor 
soils of Canada or of Australia that support which would be 
afforded in vast abundance by the rich, but undivided and 
therefore undeveloped, soils at home. Still more strongly is 
this the case in Scotland. There, entails abound. Through- 
out half the kingdom the rich soils lie unimproved, while 
poor men cultivate the poor ones. Scotchmen emigrate in 
shoals to Canada ; some of their own motion, but thousands 
at the order of their landlords, in whose hands accumulate 
immense estates, while impoverished daughters and sisters, 
reared to affluence and unable to work, hide their diminished 
heads in poor villages, thankful if their little allowances suf- 
fice to preserve them from starvation. Family pride abounds : 
but there, as everywhere, the affection of the family is in the 
inverse ratio of its pride — or vanity. 

Throughout Great Britain, restrictions on land have tended 
to render man superabundant, and to compel him to seek 



* Such was the case with the lady who was mother to Lords Wellington, 
Wellesley, Mornington, and Cowley. 



280 MAN AND HIS FAMILY. 

employment from manufacturers whose markets were uncer- 
tain, and whose wages were not unfrequently ahogether sus- 
pended. Labour has overflowed, and wives have been compel- 
led to abandon the care of their families, and to seek support 
in factory and colliery work : while children have been taxed 
far beyond their powers, to produce wages to be expended 
in dissipation by their parents. The history of both wives 
and children, as developed in the recent reports to Par- 
liament, is an awful one, and tends to show how abso- 
lutely the feelings of family affection may be blunted by the 
working of an unsound system. Throughout the whole 
island, there is now an universal demand for more wages 
and less work : and Parliament, which has already interfered 
to compel the parents to do that which parental affection has 
failed to prompt them, is now called upon to interfere between 
the employer and the employed, of all ages ; while the former 
sees ruin in the prospect of any reduction in the labours of 
the latter. That such interferences should be needed is evi- 
dence abundant of the unsoundness of the system to which 
it owes its rise. Were man permitted to develope the powers 
of the earth, he would acquire power over his own actions, 
and would then determine for himself the hours of labour, 
wdthout the aid of Parliament. Every step towards perfect 
freedom in the actual possessor of land is a step towards 
freedom in man. The fruits of the tree of Scotch and Eng- 
lish entails are agricultural paupers, starving operatives, over- 
worked children, and " uneasy" ladies and gentlemen — 
younger brothers and sisters. 

In the United States, where all marry, all see the increase 
in the numbers of their families without alarm. The growth 
of wealth so far exceeds that of population, that the demand 
for labour is constantly in advance of the supply. In addi- 
tion to the natural increase the immigration from abroad grows 
with each successive year, and the demand advances with its 
growth, for each producer is a consumer : and each makes him- 
self a market for much of the products of his own labour, while 



MAN AND HIS FAMILY. 281 

consuming a portion of the products of his neighbours. Such 
is even now the case, but it would have been at all times still 
more strongly felt had not the erroneous policy of England 
forced men to seek the west who might have been so much 
more advantageously employed in the east. With each step in 
their progress, men cultivate better soils, obtaining increased 
returns to labour: and hence the steady increase in the quan- 
tity of the comforts and conveniences of life at the command 
of the labourer, accompanied with a steady increase in the 
inducement to the exertion of the physical and mental facul- 
ties. The father works that the children may be clothed 
and educated, and when the proper time arrives they work 
for themselves, but not till then. How great are the exer- 
tions of parents for the education of their children may be 
seen from the fact that in the public schools of New York 
may be found one-fourth of the whole population of the state : 
while in the libraries belonging to those schools may be found 
twelve hundred thousand volumes, accumulated in about a 
dozen years, and now accumulating at the rate of a hundred 
thousand in each year : and were concentration on the rich soils 
possible, the number would soon be doubled. How small is the 
labour required from children of immature years may be seen 
in the fact that in the mills of Lowell, there are none below 
twelve, while but seven per cent, are below seventeen : where- 
as in England, before the late interferences, no less than 
thirty-six per cent, were below the latter age, while many 
were of such exceedinglytender years as to render their long 
continued employment in the manner described destructive 
of all power of development ; and hence the numerous crip- 
ples. Such, likewise, is the case in France, in some of 
whose manufacturing departments, almost two-fifths are ex- 
empted from the conscription because of bodily ailments.* 

* " The paupers are described as consisting of weavers, unable at times to 
gupport their families, and wholly chargeable to public or private charity in 
case of illness, scarcity, or discharge from work ; of workmen, ignorant, impro- 
vident, brutified by debauchery, or enervated by manufacturing labour, and 

2N 24* 



282 MAN AND HIS FAMILY. 

If we compare with the coal mines of England those of 
Pennsylvania, w^e see similar differences. In the first, we 
see girls and boys, sometimes of very tender age, and some- 
times working together in a state of absolute nudity : whereas, 
in the second, we see few boys, and none but those that are 
fully competent to the labour at which they are employed. In 
no part of the world, therefore, are children so soon fitted to 
provide for themselves, because in none is the parent in so 
great a degree the companion of the child; and consequently 
in none are the faculties of the latter so early developed. In 
the relation of parent and child there exists, therefore, the 
strongest tendency to harmony, while in that of the children 
with each other there is little room for cause of difference. 
In the eye of the law, all are equal. If there be property to 
be divided, any inequality of division must be a consequence of 
favour on the part of the parent, whose control over that property 
is, as it should be, absolute ; and all have therefore reason to 
cultivate his good opinion. Throughout the whole country, 
there prevails, however, a feeling of independence, and a con- 
sciousness of ability to rise, which forbid that sons should ve- 
getate while waiting for the division of the father's land : and 
there is, consequently, less of what is sometimes termed 
"waiting for dead men's shoes," and less wrangling about 
the partition of estates than in any country of the world : 
although the amount now annually divided is fully equal to 
that of the United Kingdom, if not even greater. 

With each step in the passage from the poor to the fertile 
soils, man acquires more power over his own actions, and 
a more perfect consciousness of his rights, accompanied by 
a corresponding sense of his duties. As the power of con- 
centration and of combination of action increases, labour is 

habitually unable to support their families ; of aged persons, prematurely in- 
firm, and abandoned by their children ; of children and orphans, a great num- 
ber of whom labour under incurable disease or deformity ; and of numerous fa- 
milies of hereditary paupers and beggars heaped together in loathsome cellars 
and garrets, and for the most part subject to infirmities, and addicted to brutal 
vice and depravity. 8ee Villeneuve : Economic Chretienne. 



MAN AND HIS FAMILY. 283 

more largely paid : and each step is marked by an increase 
in the power of the parent to perform his duties to the child, 
and a diminishing necessity on the part of the child for the 
performance of those duties, in case of death or accident to 
the parent : while each is marked by an increasing 'power 
on the part of the child to aid the parent, and a diminishing 
necessity on that of the latter for depending on such aid. 
Their union becomes more and more voluntary, and is, 
therefore, on both sides, more and more marked by the per- 
formance of duties, and the respect for rights. 

The PAST says to the parent of the present : <<If you de- 
sire to do justice to all your children : strive for the main- 
tenance of peace. With peace come wealth and the cultiva- 
tion of the more fertile soils : and with them comes the 
division of land, by aid of which your sons and daughters 
will be enabled to marry and settle near you, and you will 
be surrounded by happy families of children and grand- 
children." 

To the children it says : <« If you desire to remain with 
your parents, and to have your children, in turn, remain 
w^ith you : strive for the maintenance of peace." 

To all it says : " Family affection is inconsistent with 
war, and preparation for war : for with these come taxes, 
and poverty, and dispersion over the poor soils of the 
earth." 



284 CONCENTRATION AND CENTRALIZATION. 



CHAPTER X. 

CONCENTRATION AND CENTRALIZATION. 

The people of the Happy Valley commenced the work of 
cultivation on the sides of the hills by which it was shut in 
from the world. Could we have had a view of them in the 
early stages of the settlement, we should have seen a few fami- 
lies on the various sides, north, south, east, and west, culti- 
vating the thin soils, and deriving from their labour a slender 
subsistence, while below the rich soils were covered with 
magnificent trees, through which rolled a beautiful stream. 
Intercourse between the families must have been impossible, 
except by keeping round the sides of the hills, themselves 
very frequently indented by ravines also filled with trees, and 
hence all intercourse must have been attended with severe 
labour. By slow degrees we find them, however, working 
downward, and all looking inward toward the banks of the 
little stream. Population increases and cultivation extends 
itself, and the young people desire to meet together ; and 
marriages take place ; and exchanges arise ; and places of 
exchange are needed ; and farmer's sons become black- 
smiths and tanners, and shofemakers, and tailors, and hatters, 
and carpenters, and masons, and weavers ; and thus, by 
degrees, a town arises : and now we see a little community 
perfect in itself, and capable of advancing in civilization 
were it to have intercourse with none other in the world. 

If now we enter the home of one of these happy farmers, 
we find him also turning his eyes inward. His wife, his 
children, his farm, his cattle, and his house, stand first in his 
thoughts. In these it is that he finds his happiness. We 



CONCENTRATION AND CENTRALIZATION. 285 

should, however, greatly err if we supposed the man whose 
thoughts are thus concentrated upon his home to be inca- 
pable of associating with his fellow men, or to be in any degree 
incapacitated for so doing. On the contrary, it is because 
of his combination with them that he is enabled to exercise 
the power of concentration. The miller is near him, and he 
is not obliged to travel abroad with his grain when he desires 
to have it converted into flour. His near neighbours are 
the tanner, the shoemaker, the hatter and the butcher, and 
he is in the habit of daily intercourse with them. He dis- 
cusses with them and with others of his fellow-citizens, the 
laying out of roads ; the arrangements of the little and grow- 
ing town ; the building of churches ; the institution of 
schools and little libraries for his children, and the formation 
of a library for their own joint use : and he combines with 
them in all the arrangements for the maintenance of perfect 
security of person and property ; for the settlement of differ- 
ences that may arise among their fellow-citizens ; for the col- 
lection of the contributions required for the making of roads 
and for other purposes ; and for a vast variety of other mat- 
ters interesting to the community at large. Combination 
tends to promote security and the growth of w^ealth, and 
wealth enables him daily more and more to concentrate his 
thoughts upon his home, and its occupants : and this concen- 
tration, in its turn, promotes the growth of wealth, by enabling 
him daily more and more to reflect upon the measures neces- 
sary to the advancement of the common good : to devote his 
leisure in aid of those less fortunate than himself: to acquire 
knowledge by the study of nature, or of books: and thus still 
further to advance the interests of the society of which he 
has the happiness to be a member. The labours incident 
to the performance of the general business of the society 
are hght, for they are divided among all; and they cost little, 
for they are performed by the men who have themselves to 
contribute towards its payment. All work and all pay, and 
hence the work and the pay fall lightly upon each. 



286 



CONCENTRATION AND CENTRALIZATION. 



With each step in the extension of cultivation over the 
fertile soils towards the foot of the hill, the return to labour 
increases, and means are obtained for carrying the work of 
cultivation upwards towards the hill-top. Rich lands, 
whose soil is the accumulation of centuries, furnish pasture 
for fine herds of cattle. Manure abounds, for the consumer 
has taken his place by the producer. The miller, the black- 
smith, and other mechanics, exchange their products with the 
farmer, whose horses are rarely on the road, but almost always 
at the plough : and thus, from day to day, and hour to hour, 
the power of man over land, and over himself, is seen to 
grow, and with each step grows his love of home. 

If, now, we place ourselves on the hill-top, we may look 
down into other valleys like the first. In each the work of 
cultivation has commenced on the hill-side : and in each we 
see the eyes of its inhabitants turned downwards towards the 
rich lands that occupy the centre of the little settlement. In 
each we see the attention of all turned inwards towards their 
homes, and their common home. In each we see the growth 
of wealth marked by the extension of cultivation up- 
wards, and in each we see the gradual advance of roads 
towards the hill, or mountain, top : and among all the com- 
munities of all these little valleys, we see a tendency towards 
the establishment of communication with each other, for 
purposes of trade, and for facilitating operations of common 
interest. 

If, now, we take a bird's-eye view of these various commu- 
nities, we shall see in each an infinite number of little pyra- 
mids, with heights proportioned to their breadth and depth. 
With the extension of the breadth of cultivation we have seen 
it rising in its height until it has advanced far up the steep 
hill-side ; and on all sides we see it rising higher as it 
sinks deeper into the fertile soils of the valley below. In 
each we see a variety of schools surmounted by an aca- 
demy for the more advanced : and that, as wealth and popu- 
lation shall increase, and academies shall become more nu- 



CONCENTRATION AND CENTRALIZATION. 287 

merous, and as the love of knowledge sinks deeper into their 
souls, to be itself surmounted by a college. In each we see 
the little associations for purposes of general interest to the 
various sections of the valley, surmounted by a general one 
assembled in the little town, the common centre of attraction 
to the whole people. 

With the establishment of intercourse among these little 
communities, the tendency to union, so well begun in each, 
is seen to spread. Each grows in wealth and population, 
and intercourse becomes more frequent ; and next we find 
them all combining for the making of roads, or canals, the 
founding of colleges, and other works calculated to promote 
the common good. The union becomes more complete : and 
rules are adopted for the determination of the relations of the 
several communities, and of those of the members of each, 
with each other : and thus by degrees a government is formed. 
General law^s now embrace the whole of the various societies 
constituting this new pyramid, which now surmounts the 
whole. 

If we now look down again into the several societies, we 
shall see that to their members the importance of these laws 
diminishes with distance. First stands the home. Next, 
the common home of the original community : and, lastly, 
the general home of the several communities. In the first, each 
finds his chief source of happiness. In the second, he finds 
means of augmenting that happiness, by combination with 
his neighbours for the maintenance of the roads in daily use 
by himself and them : for the support of schools required by 
his children, the library required for himself, and the church 
required by his family. In the third, he combines with more 
distant neighbours for the maintenance of roads which he 
sometimes uses, and for the regulation of affairs of general 
interest, by which he may at times be affected : whereas in 
the regulation of those of his own little community he has a 
daily and hourly interest : and in those of his own home, one 
that ceases neither day nor night. 



288 CONCENTRATION AND CENTRALIZATION. 

General laws are formed, but local regulations remain un- 
touched : and thus each little community preserves its perfect 
individuaUty, rendered more perfect by union with its neigh- 
bours ; for the union of all adds to the power of each for the 
maintenance of the perfect security essential to the growth 
of wealth and population, and the further extension of culti- 
vation. Each has now its own government for all matters 
appertaining to its members, while each submits to general 
rules for the conduct of their people towards those of the ad- 
jacent communities. The base of each widens, and their 
relations with each other become more intimate, as better 
soils are taken into cultivation : and with each step their 
power of union and their strength increase ; yet concentra- 
tion w^ithin the limits of each becomes more and more com- 
plete. Each now has churches of various denominations. 
Each has high schools, and preparatory schools. Each has 
the fashioner and the producer by the side of each other. 
Each sees to its own roads and bridges, and each has its lo- 
cal court for the settlement of differences among its people. 
The machinery of all this is simple, and the cost is light ; for 
those w^ho look to the affairs of the community do so in the 
intervals of their own employments : and as the people deter- 
mine for themselves whom and what they will pay, they de- 
sire to have little waste. In time, twenty, thirty, fifty, or a 
hundred of these little communities, at first scattered over 
the land, and separated by broad tracts of forest, and deep 
and rapid rivers running through the most fertile lands : or 
by hills and mountains : are brought into connection w4th 
each other : and these numerous little pyramids now form a 
great pyramid, or State. Perfect concentration, however, still 
exists. Local rules still govern local interests, and local 
judges decide local differences. Local roads and bridges 
are made under the direction of local officers: and local mills, 
and shops, and factories, furnish the producer with mouths to 
consume on the ground the various products of the earth. 
The State, thus formed, is neighbour to another little State ; 



CONCENTRATION AND CENTRALIZATION. 289 

and with the further growth of population and wealth inter- 
course arises, and a new union is now formed ; each, however, 
still preserving its local organization and its laws, so far as 
regards the interest of its own people, but adopting such as 
may be deemed equitable in relation to those of their own 
State with those of the other. Each grows again : and within 
each the little pyramids rise, increasing in height, and 
breadth, and density : and again arise new unions with other 
and more distant little States ; and with each step wealth and 
population advance more rapidly. The great union acquires 
strength from the increasing strength of the various parts of 
which it is composed ; and the little unions acquire it, be- 
cause of the perfect concentration of their local concerns, by 
means of which each is left to determine for itself what to do, 
and what to omit doing, in regard to its own business : and 
to do it by persons selected by themselves, and to do it eco- 
nomically. With each step in their progress of wealth and 
population, there is in each little community an increasing 
number of persons possessing each his own land, and his own 
house, upon which he concentrates his exertions for his own 
physical improvement ; and his own wife, and his own chil- 
dren, in whom centre his hopes of happiness : and for the 
promotion of whose ease, and comfort, and enjoyment, he 
is at all times anxious to exert his physical and intellectual 
faculties. The machine is simple. It moves of itself, for 
each man moves his share. The work is done, yet it is 
difficult to see by whom. The labour is light, for it is 
done by many. The strength is great: for it has the form 
which all matter tends to take, and which is, consequently, 
the most natural. Its power of resistance is great. Its power 
of motion is small, and hence its tendency to peace. 

Such is concentration. Opposed thereto is centralization. 
The one looks inward, and tends to promote a love of home 
and of quiet happiness, and a desire for union ; facilitating 
the growth of wealth and the preparation of the great machine 
of production, and enabling man acquire a love of books 
2 25 



290 CONCENTRATION AND CENTRALIZATION. 

and a habit of independent thought and action. Here each 
man minds his own business, and superintends the applica- 
tion of the proceeds of his own labour. Centralization, on 
the contrary, looks outward, and tends to promote a love of 
war and discord, and a disrelish for home and its pursuits, 
preventing the growth of wealth, and retarding the prepara- 
tion of the great machine. Under it men are forced to move 
in masses, governed by ministers, and generals, and admi- 
rals : and the habit of independent thought or action has no 
existence. Here no man is permitted to mind his ow^n busi- 
ness, and no man controls the application of the proceeds of 
his labour. The State manages every thing, and the State 
is composed of those whose profits are derived from manag- 
ing the affairs of others. 

Throughout the world has existed a tendency to the con- 
centration of man, as may be seen by studying the progress 
of Attica and of Greece generally : of the cities of Latium : 
of those of the Netherlands, and of India : but in the early 
periods of the history of man, he is seen uniformly to have 
been exceedingly poor, and compelled to depend for subsist- 
ence on the poorest soils ; as witness eastern Argolis, so early 
abandoned : and hence the perpetual contests in Greece for 
the possession of little tracts of land capable of yielding food. 
In this fact may be found the cause of the difficulty of general 
association, seen invariably in the early periods of society : 
and to this may be traced the existence of power on the one 
hand, and that of slavery on the other. Individual power 
over bodies of men has been, at all times, and in all nations, 
attended by contests for the exercise of that power. Poverty 
tends thus to produce foreign war, to increase poverty, and 
to produce the concentration of land : and this, in turn, tends 
to produce civil war, to augment poverty, and to increase 
the appetite for foreign wars ; as is shown in the histories of 
all countries, but especially in those of Greece, Rome, and 
France. It was reserved for later times, when w^ealth, mate- 
rial and intellectual, more abounded ; and when men could 



CONCENTRATION AND CENTRALIZATION. 291 

occupy better soils than those of Attica and the eastern slope 
of Argolis, to exhibit the gradual formation of a community 
in a manner perfectly natural, and almost undisturbed by 
foreign or domestic wars. 

France has never, from the days of Clovis, exhibited any 
material tendency to the concentration of man, or of wealth 
upon land : or of the affections of man upon either wife or 
family. In the early period of her history, we jfind barons in- 
numerable, engaged in collecting men and taxes, for the pur- 
pose of carrying them forth from their territories, to spread ruin 
among their neighbours. For a brief period, we find nobles 
and sovereigns granting charters to cities and towns, to en- 
able them to acquire power to become centres of their various 
neighbourhoods, and thus to bring the consumer to the side 
of the producer. Perpetual war and desolation enfeeble the 
towns and they gradually lose the few privileges they have 
obtained, and the consumer and producer are again separated. 
Great nobles and kings are next seen gathering together all 
of men and wealth that can be commanded, and carrying 
them forth into Italy and Spain, Germany and the Nether- 
lands : there to be employed in the acquisition of power over 
the wealth of other men. The great city of Paris : great be- 
cause alone capable of affording the slightest protection to 
person and property, and therefore the resort, from all parts 
of the kingdom, of those who had been plundered and de- 
sired to plunder in turn : fares like the rest, and loses its pri- 
viles^es. If the reader desire now to see and understand the 
process by which poverty has been maintained in France, 
and the causes why she still continues to cultivate poor soils, 
he may study the history of that city in the reigns of Charles 
VI. and VII., and then satisfy himself what must have been 
the condition of the lesser cities of Amiens and Beauvais, 
Aix and Thoidouse. The rights of the people have had no 
existence. The right to labour, even, was deemed to be 
held of the crown, and crown and nobles made themselves 
the conduits by which the population and wealth of the 



292 CONCENTRATION AND CENTRALIZATION. 

kingdom were passed to foreign countries. With the excep- 
tion of a feeble attempt to establish local courts in opposi- 
tion to the parliament of Paris, we meet, for centuries, with 
no attempt at the local concentration of either man or power 
in any portion of the kingdom. Every thing had to go forth 
from the place of production in payment of the taille, and the 
thousand other taxes : and the people were corveeable a vo~ 
lonte, to make the roads by which it was to pass out. With 
the Revolution was swept away the very shadow of local 
administration. From that moment, every thing went forth, 
to every part of Europe, and on the seas and oceans by 
which it was surrounded.* Conscriptions were anticipated, 
and boys of sixteen were torn from their mothers' arms. 
None remained at home but the blind, the halt, and the lame, 
and the stunted ; and thus was France exhausted. The 
little pyramids had never risen, and the great ones could 
not rise. Paris and the Emperor stood alone, columns in the 
desert, and on the first attack both toppled over. 

From that hour to the present every thing has continued to 
go forth from the land to Paris, there to be distributed and 
exported by means of armies and fleets; or in the payment for 
luxuries consumed by kings, and princes, and nobles, and 
gentleman, and financiers, and all others of the class who 
live by managing the business of others. Seventy per cent. 
of the whole revenue of the land-owner in this manner goes 
forth in the payment of taxes and interest ; and hence it is 
that the kingdom exhibits throughout a dreary flat, occupied 
by a poor people who scratch the poorest soils, and who 
pretend to the exercise of no single right : being still, in 
fact, though not in theory, tailleahle et corveeable a merci et 
a TYiisericorde. Prefects, and mayors, and deputies, and depu- 
ties' assistants : all are provided for them. If the bridge re- 
quires to be rebuilt, it is to be done, or not done, for, and 

* "But France got drunk with blood to vomit crime, 
And fatal have her saturnalia l)een 
To Freedom's cause, in every age and clime." — Byron. 



CONCENTRATION AND CENTRALIZATION. 293 

not by, them. If the road requires repair, orders therefor 
must come from Paris. If the mine proprietor desire to 
open his coal, he must solicit permission at Paris, and pay 
for it. If the baker desires to open a shop, he must seek 
permission, and pay for it. Local institutions have no exist- 
ence. Local expenditure has none. Local manufactures, 
or local unions, or local action of any kind, have none. 
They can have none, for the whole product of the kingdom, 
except what is needed for the absolute support of life, is 
swallowed up by officers of the crown, to pass by ever}^ 
channel to Paris, that thence it may be forced out to Alge- 
ria for the subjugation of Abd-el-Kader ; to Spain, to pro- 
mote intrigues in which the people have no interest ; to 
Egypt and elsewhere, to procure knowledge of olden times 
and of hieroglyphics, while the people at large are unable to 
read or write their own language ; to create picture galleries 
for a people, one-half of whom are forced to obtain bread- 
tickets to save them from starvation : and, in short, by every 
means that can be devised to drive it forth from the land, 
and to prevent the concentration of man or of wealth in any 
portion of the kingdom. The system grows with what it 
feeds on. Under the government of the Restoration, a 
thousand millions sufficed. Gradually it rose to twelve, 
thirteen, fifteen, and now even sixteen hundred millions are 
insufficient ; yet at this moment, when people pay for the 
privilege of abandoning lands they have not means to cultivate, 
we see complaints that the sovereign has not yet been ena- 
bled to provide the proper retiring pensions for ministers. 
Such being the system, w^e feel disposed to believe with M. 
Rubichon^* that the government must eventually become pro- 
prietor of the whole soil of France. That time arrived, and 
it seems likely soon to arrive, the whole kingdom will pre- 
sent a dead level of serfdom, preparatory to the recom- 

* Editor of the Statistics of France, recently published by order of the 
king. 

25* 



294 CONCENTRATION AND CENTRALIZATION. 

menceraent of troubles similar to those which marked the 
close of the last century. 

Louis Philippe is called the Napoleon of peace. His 
only claim to the title is that he has not himself made war 
in Europe. The French people do not desire war, nor have 
they ever desired it. The peace of Europe has been per- 
petually disturbed by sovereigns of France, who have 
ruined the people over whom they presided. Louis Philippe 
has not made war in Europe, but around him everywhere he 
has promoted war ; and he is now exhausting France, and 
rendering her poor and turbulent, preparatory to becoming 
revolutionary. He has restored to the people no one right 
of which they had been deprived ; but he has deprived them 
of rights, and of the power to protect themselves, by in- 
creased demands for men and money to go forth from France. 
The thing which is called in France centralization is the re- 
verse of concentration. The latter tends to enable men to 
cultivate better soils, and to unite for the purpose of govern- 
ing themselves. The former, to compel men to abandon good 
soils and fly to poor ones ; and to submit to being governed 
by others. Some little concentration exists in Paris, and hence 
the necessity for bringing it under the control of cannon. 

Peace at home, and the consequent growth of wealth and 
population, have tended to produce local concentration in 
England ; but that tendency has been, and still is, neutral- 
ized by a thousand opposing influences. Towns and cities 
have corporations, with privileges exercising strong repulsive 
tendencies. Parliament centralizes the power of Eng- 
land, Scotland, and Ireland, within the walls of St. Ste- 
phen's, that it may devote itself more advantageously to 
the management of the affairs of the world, and thus expel 
the population and the wealth that might be advantageously 
employed at home. The bank centralizes the money power, 
that it may promote the expulsion of the wealth that escapes 
the government, in loans to Russia and Mexico, Indiana and 
Illinois : in making banks in Australia, and railroads in France 



CONCENTRATION AND CENTRALIZATION. 295 

and India. The bar centralizes legal power in London, that 
a few may acquire large fortunes, to be invested in govern- 
ment loans that are applied to the maintenance of fleets and 
armies. The manufacturers centralize capital in Manchester 
and Stockport, that they may supply cheap cloths to 
foreign countries, that would benefit themselves and Eng- 
land much more largely were they permitted to place the 
consumer and the producer by the side of each other. The 
land-owner centralizes his rents, to be expended in London, 
Paris, or Italy ; when, if they were expended where they had 
been produced, they would have given more and better food 
to his tenants, and more rent to himself. He centralizes the 
road-making power in the hands of himself and his fellows, 
that he may sell his land at high prices to the road-makers. 

Every thing tends to centralize itself in London ; and 
hence it is that picture-galleries are created, while nothing 
is given to the great work of placing the whole people 
in a condition to read and Jhink for themselves. Hence it is 
that so much care is bestowed upon the relations of the peo- 
ple of Syria, Portugal, and Italy, with each other, and so 
little upon those of the peopleof England among themselves. 
Hence, too, it is that bishoprics are established abroad, 
while to the labourer's child at home is scarcely taught the 
existence of a Deity. Hence, too, the care bestow^ed upon 
the negro slave in America by a people surrounded by starv- 
ing operatives and half-clothed labourers. 

The tendency of centralization in England, as in France, 
is to cause men to mind the business of others, and to 
neglect their ow^n ; to cause them to look from home : and 
hence it is that << ships, commerce, and colonies" is the 
motto of England. She is now turning her attention towards 
home ; and men are finding that if they would continue to 
have rents they must make roads and improve their lands ; 
and that every such investment yields twice or thrice the 
rate of interest afforded by other modes in which labour can 
be employed. Even this, however, is done in a manner 



296 CONCENTRATION AND CENTRALIZATION. 

tending to concentrate wealth in a few hands. Iron masters, 
railroad kings, and great landlords, grow rich : while the 
mass of little capitalists are ruined by a speculation that 
owes its origin to the centralization of power in the hands 
of great bankers, and great legislators. Concentration is, 
however, taking the place of centralization, and cotton mills 
are closed as railroads are made. Food will become 
cheaper, and clothing less cheap ; and other nations may 
be permitted to place the consumer by the side of the pro- 
ducer. When that time shall arrive, we shall see the ter- 
mination of the system of government commissions for the 
centralization of power in the hands of the few, who charge 
themselves w^ith the management of the affairs of others : 
paying themselves largely for the work. 

In the growth of the United States, we have the exempli- 
fication of the natural system. At first we find a few scat- 
tered settlements gradually approaching each other ; they 
form states, and the states at length form a union, growing 
from year to year by the addition of new states ; yet towns, 
counties, and states preserve each their local administration 
and government, managing their own affairs in their own 
way : and leaving to the general association little more than 
the management of the affairs of the whole body with other 
bodies beyond their limits. 

In Massachusetts, the oldest of the States, this exemplifi- 
cation is by far the most complete. Concentration of man, 
of wealth and power, and of the human affections, exists 
to a degree unequalled in the world : and hence the small 
amount of business that devolves upon the public servants. 
Wealth tends to stay at home, and to be invested where it is 
produced ; and hence the rapid advance in prosperity. 
Passing south and west, we find diminishing concentration : 
diminishing power in the people to assert their right to 
manage their own affairs in their own way : and increasing 
power in their deputies to compel them to manage those 
affairs in the way dictated by others. In no part of the 



CONCENTRATION AND CENTRALIZATION. 297 

world, however, do the people do so much for themselves, 
and ill no part is it so well and so cheaply done, as in the 
United States at large.* 

The result of the three systems is as follow^s : 
The product of the thirty-five millions of the people of 
France is about $1400,000,000, of which those charged with 
the administration of the affairs of the nation take almost a 
fourth, or ten dollars a head. That of the twenty-eight mil- 
lions of the United Kingdom is about $1800,000,000, of which 
those charged with the management of affairs of Church and 
State, take about a sixth, or ten dollars a head. That of 
the twenty-one millions of the people of the United States 
exceeds $2000,000,000, of which the various governments, 
local and general, county and city, take about a forty-eighth 
part, or two dollars a head.f The product and division per 
head are, therefore, as follow^s : 



Product. 


Labour and Capital. 


Government 


France - . . 40 - 


30 


10 


Great Britain and Ireland - 64 - 


- 54 - 


- 10 


United States - - 95 - 


93 


2 



In the first, the people leave all to the government, which is 
largely paid, and nothing is done for them. In the second, the 
people do much, but much is left to the government, and 

* '< Of all nations this is perhaps the one whose government affords the 
least scope for glory. None has the burden of directing her. It is her nature 
and her passion to go by herself. The conduct of affairs does not depend upon 
a certain number of persons ; it is the work of all. The efforts are universal ; 
and any individual impulse would only interfere with the general movement. 
In this country political ability consists not in doing, but in standing off and 
letting alone. Magnificent is the spectacle of a whole people moving and go- 
verning itself; — but nowhere do individuals appear so small." — De Beaumont. 
■j-The taxes were thus estimated by 31. Chevalier, ten years since, for the 
State of New York : 

Federal taxes $1 40 

State taxes .-.---- 19 

County tax -.-.._- 31 

Local school-tax -..-_- 9 



$1 99 
This may be taken as a fair average for the Union, and the variation from 
hat time to the present is not material. 

2P 



298 CONCENTRATION AND CENTRALIZATION. 

something is done. In the last the people do almost every 
thing, and leave little to the government, which is slightly 
paid, and every thing is done. The first looks altogether 
abroad, and cultivates the worst soils at home. The second 
looks very much abroad, and cultivates a vast amount of poor 
soils at home. The third concentrates its energies at home, 
and passes as rapidly as it can from the poor to the better 
soils, and labour is every day more largely rewarded. With 
concentration, the production would be greatly increased, 
while the necessity for government would be lessened : be- 
cause the power of self-government would be increased. 

The great prosperity of the people of the United States 
is uniformly attributed to their abundance of fertile soils. 
They have been supposed to be receiving wages for their 
labour, plus the excess that elsewhere would be absorbed as 
rent. Forced, however, to squander their labours over the 
poor soils of the west, and to use a vast amount of the infe- 
rior machinery of exchange, they appear to have been re- 
ceiving only wages minus the profits of the capital which has 
been wasted in subjecting to cultivation poor soils, when 
fertile ones v/ere at hand waiting the demand for their pro- 
ducts. The rich meadow-lands of Pennsylvania and of 
various other States have remained covered with timber, 
while thousands have sought the west, there to commence the 
work of cultivation on dry prairie-land upon which trees 
will not grow ; and to obtain from an acre of land thirty or 
forty bushels of Indian corn that must be converted into pork 
before it can reach a market, distant thousands of miles : 
whereas, by the careful cultivation of the better soils of the 
older States, their labour might have been blessed with re- 
turns far greater. An acre of turnips in England is made to 
yield twelve or fourteen tons. Acres of potatoes yield fre- 
quently almost as much ; whereas an acre of prairie-land 
yields but a ton of Indian corn, the most productive of all 
grains. The meadow-land of Pennsylvania is not worth the 
cost of clearing, because the market for its products has ao 



CONCENTRATION AND CENTRALIZATION. 299 

existence: and until the consumer shall place himself side by 
side with the producer, it can have none. Place him there, 
and then nothing will be lost. The rich soils will give forth 
their products, and the refuse will remain on the spot, to go 
back into the ground : and thus the produce of the rich will 
fatten the poor ones. The land round cities is valuable, 
because the soil gives forth its produce by tons : not bushels. 
An acre of potatoes w^U outweigh a dozen acres of wheat, 
and its refuse will fertilize an acre of poor soil ; but from the 
produce of an acre of wheat sent abroad to be exchanged, 
nothing goes back upon the land. We see everywhere that 
when furnaces are built, coal mines opened, or mills esta- 
blished, land in the immediate vicinity becomes more valu- 
able : and it is because that, when the consumer and the 
producer come together, man is enabled to compel the rich 
soils to exert their powers in giving forth the vast supplies of 
food of which they are capable, and to pay them back by giv- 
ing them the w^hole refuse : and until they do come together, 
nothing can be done. To render the meadow land worth the 
cost of clearing, the farmer must have a market on the ground 
for his milk and cream, his veal and his beef. If compelled 
to convert the milk into cheese, giving the refuse to his 
hogs ; and to drive his lean cattle to market : sending also to 
distant markets the food they would have consumed in the 
process of being fattened, and thus losing altogether the 
manure : the land is but little more valuable than the prairies 
of the west, always to be had at the minimum price of a 
dollar and twenty-five cents an acre : whereas to clear the 
trees and stumps and level the ground might cost twenty 
dollars : and hence it is that men fly from rich soils to poor 
ones. The people of the United States are now scattered 
over a million of square miles, and over that vast surface 
they have been forced to make roads, and to build court- 
houses, schools, and churches : whereas, had they been per- 
mitted to follow the bent of their inclinations they would not, 
at this time, have passed the Mississippi. The tendency of 



300 CONCENTRATION AND CENTRALIZATION. 

man is to combine his exertions with those of his fellow men ; 
and when we find him doing otherwise the cause will be 
found, invariably, in the existence of some essential error in 
the course of policy. Self-interest prompts him to this union. 
He feels that two, ten, or twelve, acting together, can accom- 
plish that which would be impossible to a thousand men, 
each acting alone : yet is he seen flying off to the wilderness, 
abandoning his home, his parents, and his friends, while 
meadows uncleared exist in unlimited quantity, soliciting 
his acceptance of their gifts. To produce an effect so con- 
trary to the laws of nature, a powerful repulsive force must 
exist. It does exist, and the extent of its power may be 
measured by an examination of the condition of the adjacent 
province of Canada. Concentration therein is impossible. 
The man who should undertake there to establish a work of 
almost any description, would inevitably be ruined by the 
perpetual fluctuations of the English system. 

But a few months since, the prices of cotton cloths were 
high. Now, the mills are closed, and a single town exhibits 
twelve hundred houses unoccupied. The cotton manufac- 
turer of Canada would be ruined. Three years since, the 
price of iron was low, because peers would permit but 
few railroads to be made. Now, it is high, because they 
have permitted the formation of roads innumerable. A 
month hence railroad building may stop, and then the 
world will be flooded with iron, and foreigners will be 
ruined. Against such revulsions, the product of a system 
that is to the last degree unsound, the people of the British 
provinces have no protection. Ministers are omnipotent : 
Parliament is omnipotent ; and the Bank is omnipotent. 
They make war or peace : grant or refuse railroads : make 
money abundant or scarce, at their pleasure ; and the poor 
colonies must bear all : and hence the utter worthlessness 
of land, as is shown by the occurrences of every day.* 

* " By describing one siJe of the frontier, and reversing the picture, the 
other would be described. On the American side, all is activity and bustle. 



CONCENTRATION AND CENTRALIZATION. 301 

Railroads and canals are made with government assistance, 
but they are almost unused, and so must they continue to 
be, until the people shall acquire the power of self-protec- 
tion : or until England shall have learned to obtain her own 
food from her own rich soils, and to permit those who occupy 
the other portions of the earth to consume, on the ground 
on which it is produced, their own food, returning to the soil 
its refuse : and thus facilitating the construction of the 
great machine, and the development of all its wonderful 
powers. 

From first to last we may see in the great fathers of the 
country a full belief that the proximity of the consumer and 
the producer was essential to the promotion of agriculture. 



The forest has been widely cleared : every year numerous settlements are 
formed, and thousands of farms are created out of the waste ; the country is 
intersected with common roads, &c. * * * On the British side of the 
line, with the exception of a few favoured spots, where some approach to 
American prosperity is apparent, all seems waste and desolate. * * The 
ancient city of Montreal, which is naturally the capital of Canada, will not 
bear the least comparison, in any respect, with Buffalo, which is a creation of 
yesterday. But it is not in the difference between the larger towns on the two 
sides that we shall find the best evidence of our inferiority. That painful but 
most undeniable truth is most manifest in the country districts through which 
the line of national separation passes, for a distance of a thousand miles. 
There, on the side of both the Canadas, and also of New Brunswick and 
Nova Scotia, a widely scattered population, poor, and apparently unenterpris- 
ing, though hardy and industrious, separated from each other by tracts of 
intervening forests, without towns or markets, almost without roads, living in 
mean houses, drawing little more than a rude subsistence from ill cultivated 
land, and seemingly incapable of improving their condition, present the most 
instructive contrast to their enterprising and thriving neighbours on the Ame- 
rican side. * * * Throughout the frontier, from Amherstburgh to the ocean, 
the market value of land is much greater on the American than on the British 
side. In not a few parts of the frontier this difference amounts to a thousand 
per cent. * * * The price of land in Vermont and New Hampshire, 
close to the line, is five dollars per acre, and in the adjoining British townships, 
only one dollar. On this side of the hne, a very large extent of land is wholly 
unsaleable even at such low prices, while on the other side property is conti- 
nually changing hands. * * * I am positively assured that superior na- 
tural fertility belongs to the British territory. In Upper Canada, the whole of 
the great peninsula between Lakes Erie and Huron, comprising nearly half 
of the available land of the province, is generally considered the best grain 
country of the American continent." — Lord Durham. 

26 



302 CONCENTRATION AND CENTRALIZATION. 

They had seen the effects of provincial government. They 
had been in the situation in which Canada now is placed, 
and they had felt its hardships. The people of that pro- 
vince are poor, and so must they remain pending the exist- 
ence of the system : because, while it lasts, they must con- 
tinue to scatter themselves over the po®r soils. There great 
men are numerous. They are busily employed in governing 
the poor and scattered little men, and paying themselves : as 
they will continue to do, so long as the power of concentra- 
tion on the rich soils shall continue to be denied. The 
abundance of land is said to be the cause of American pros- 
perity, but Canada has land in greater abundance, and yet she 
is too poor to make a road : too poor to keep her own people, 
wh® are now deserting her capital to open houses of trade 
in New York : too poor to keep the unhappy immigrants 
from Ireland : while the ever-growing wealth of the Union, 
blessed as it has heretofore been with peace, has furnidied 
means of employment for all that came direct from the Bri- 
tish Isles and from Europe at large, and all that overflowed 
from Canada ; and having received them, has placed them 
at once in a situation to obtain, if they would, houses, lots, 
and lands : homes of their own. 

The right of resistance to wrong is inherent in every man : 
and every man and every nation may be at times compelled 
to resort to war in self-defence. War is an evil, and so are 
tariffs of protection : yet both may be necessary, and both 
are sometimes necessary. But for universal resistance, the 
corn-laws would still exist, and the land-owners of England 
would not yet have felt the necessity of looking towards 
home. Concentration is now advancing in the United States 
because the interferences of England are diminished, and 
thus we see mills slowly rising throughout the Southern 
States, filled with black operatives. Planters now raise the 
food required for their hands, and ploughs and other agricul- 
tural implements are made at home : and hence it is that the 
overcharofed markets of the w^orld are reheved of the sur- 



CONCENTRATION AND CENTRALIZATION. 303 

plus cotton, and that the planter obtains for a crop of two 
millions more than could have been yielded by one of three 
millions. With a large crop freights are high, and the ma- 
chinery of exchange absorbs a large proportion of the small 
price obtained abroad. With a small crop, freights are low 
and prices abroad are high ; and the planter obtains a large 
reward, enabling him to clear and drain his rich soils. He 
is placing the consumer by the side of the producer, and 
with every step in this course he will obtain increased re- 
turns from a diminished surface. With each, he will im- 
prove his own condition, while the labour of those by whom 
he is surrounded will become daily more valuable : and with 
each, there will be seen an increasing tendency to improve- 
ment in their physical, moral, intellectual and political con- 
dition. If we now turn our eyes to Pennsylvania, we see 
the same results. To bring into activity the coal mines of 
the eastern portion of that State, has required an expenditure 
of $50,000,000, by aid of which they now send to market 
three millions of tons of coal, worth $6,000,000 : all of 
which is expended on the spot, in payments to labourers 
employed in mining coal, constructing engines, and build- 
ing houses. Small as is, as yet, the result, it has doubled 
the value of every farm, over hundreds of thousands of 
acres. The farmer has now a market for his timber, and he 
clears his rich lands with profit to himself from furnishing 
wood to be used in propping mines, building boats, laying 
railroads, and building houses. He has a market for his 
cabbages, his turnips, and his potatoes ; his veal and his 
beef; and he is thus gradually acquiring power to force out 
from the great treasury of food what nature intended it 
should give forth : and that power is consequent upon the 
fact that men have come to eat it. Close the mines, and he 
must raise wheat to compete with the product of the dry 
lands of western prairies : and at once must his lands decline 
in value. To accomplish thus much required a vast sum : 
but, as we have already seen, in every operation connected 



304 CONCENTRATION AND CENTRALIZATION. 

with the fashioning of the great machine, the first cost is 
the greatest. The land that yields coal yields also iron ore. 
A hundred furnaces would produce five hundred thousand 
tons of iron, worth, at the price in England, $12,000,000, or 
twice as ranch as the present yield of coal : and yet these hun- 
dred furnaces, that would bring to the producer twice as many 
mouths as does now the coal, would cost but $3,000,000. 
Why, then, are they not built ? Capital abounds for every 
purpose, and iron which should be sold for fifteen dollars, 
commands thirty dollars : and yet furnaces are built but 
slowly. The reason is to be found in the fact that every 
species of manufacture is a lottery, and will so continue 
while the policy of England remains unchanged. The fur- 
nace-builder must calculate upon paying himself in a year 
or two, and so much time may not be allowed him. Even 
at this moment, the increasing difficulties of the times may 
have caused the abandonment of great lines of roads, dimi- 
nishing the demand for iron, and lessening the price one- 
half: and if so the furnaces and rolling-mills of Pennsyl-- 
vania may be closed. Pending the existence of this state of 
things in a nation possessing the power that is wielded by 
England, all operations of trade or manufacture requiring 
large expenditure, must continue to be mere gambling ; and, 
as a necessary consequence, they must continue to be mono- 
polized by the few who can afford to incur large risks for 
the chance of large profits : and those are not the men who 
work most economically. When the manufacture of iron 
shall become safe, it will fall into the hands of working 
men : and then iron will be cheap. While such fluctuations 
shall continue, all operations in agriculture must likewise con- 
tinue to be attended with great vibrations, consequent upon the 
changes of EngKsh action. At one time, cabbages and po- 
tatoes will find a market on the ground, as in parts of the 
country now they do. At another, they will rot in the ground 
for want of a market, as some years since they did. 

The tendency of the whole system of the United States, 



CONCENTRATION AND CENTRALIZATION. 305 

is that of taking- from the great machine all that it will 
yield, and of giving nothing back : and that tendency flows 
necessarily from the want of power over their own actions. 
Concentration is natural, and dispersion is unnatural, yet dis- 
persion flows naturally from the absence of that power. The 
farmer of New York raises wheat, which exhausts the land. 
That wheat he sells, and both grain and straw are lost. 
The average yield per acre, originally twenty bushels, falls 
one-third. Had he a market on the ground for wheat, and milk 
and veal, he could cultivate rich soils, and the same labour 
that now yields ten bushels would yield him forty : and with 
each year he could clear such soils, for increasing popula- 
tion would produce demand for timber, and stone, and clay 
for bricks ; and with each the great machine would yield 
forth more largely the treasures with which it is charged. 
He sows his wheat early and it is killed by the fly. Had 
he a market on the ground, for the produce of the rich soils 
now covered with timber, he could so improve his land as to 
sow it late, and then it would escape the fly. He sows his 
wheat on bottom lands, and it is killed by frost. Had he a 
market on the ground for veal and beef, he could enrich 
his higher lands with the manure produced on the lower 
ones, and then he would escape the frost. The farmer of 
Ohio raises wheat on thin soils, and it is killed by drought. 
He tries raising corn and wheat on the river soils, and it is 
drowned out, or destroyed by rust. He obtains ten bushels 
to the acre, w^hich he must sell : and the produce of his land 
diminishes with each year. Were the consumer near him, 
his lower lands would be appropriated to meadows for his 
cattle, whose manure would enrich the poor soils of the 
higher lands, and drought would not then materially affect 
them. Another obtains thirty bushels of Indian corn from 
rich land, that, under a proper system of drainage, might 
yield a hundred bushels : but while he wastes his labour and 
manure on the road, no drainage can take place. Thirty- 
two tons of corn, sown broad- cast, have been obtained from 
2Q 26* 



306 CONCENTRATION AND CENTRALIZATION. 

an acre, in Massachusetts. That acre was enriched with 
the manure yielded by western corn, consumed in the rich 
State that has already placed the consumer by the side of 
the producer. When Ohio shall make a market for such 
crops, she will have them. 

The Kentuckian exhausts his land with hemp, and then 
wastes his manure on the road, in carrying it to market. Had 
he a market on the ground for corn and oats, peas and beans, 
cabbages, and potatoes, and turnips, he might restore the 
waste : but the rich bottom lands must remain undrained 
until he can place the consumer side by side with the pro- 
ducer. 

Virginia is exhausted by tobacco, and men desert their 
homes to seek in the west new lands, to be again exhausted : 
and thus are labour and manure wasted, while the great 
machine deteriorates, because men cannot come to take from 
it the vast supplies of food with which it is charged. 
Thousands of acres, heavily timbered with oak, poplar, 
beech, sugar-tree, elm and hickory, are offered at about the 
government price, or a dollar an acre, and on long credit, but 
they are not worth clearing : and they cannot be cleared, 
until there shall arise a demand for lumber for the construc- 
tion of houses, mills, and railroads : and that cannot arise 
so long as men shall continue to be limited to the use of the 
worst machinery of exchange ; wasting on the roads the ma- 
nure yielded by the products of their poor soils, and the labour 
that might be applied to the clearing of the rich ones. An 
acre of wheat has been made to produce a hundred bush- 
els, and such will, at some future day, be the produce of 
these lands : but the consumer and the producer will then be 
near neighbours to each other, and all the manure produced 
by the land will go back again to the great giver of these 
rich supplies. She pays well those that feed her, but she 
starves those who starve her : and she expels them. 

The cotton planter raises small crops on thin soils, and he, 
too, is ruined by drought. He tries rich soils, and rains 



CONCENTRATION AND CENTRALIZATION. 307 

destroy his crop, even 1o the extent of more than two hundred 
thousand bales, worth many millions of dollars, in a single 
season. Were he near neighbour to consumers of food, 
vegetable and animal, he could raise large crops of grass 
and food on rich lands, and manure the poor ones : and then 
he would suffer little from drought or rain. He would have 
always at hand, aid in harvest, and his cotton fields would 
yield him larger crops from smaller surface. 

South Carolina has millions of acres admirably adapted to 
the raising of rich grasses, the manure produced from which 
would enrich the exhausted cotton lands : but she exports 
rice and cotton, and loses all the manure, and must continue 
so to do until the consumer of veal, and beef, and corn, shall 
take his place by the side of the producer of cotton. When 
that time shall arrive, her wealth and population will both 
increase : but until then both must continue to diminish. 

The sugar planter raises large crops, but they too are 
drowned out : or, if they escape the loss from rain, they 
perish with the frost. Had he neighbours who would con- 
sume food produced from rich land, he might raise his sugar 
on lighter soils while draining his heavier ones ; and he 
would have at hand supplies of labour to aid him in his 
harvest. He now prays for the appearance of the cotton 
worm, as the farmer of Ohio prays for the potato-rot in Ire- 
land. The one wants hands to make his crop, and the other 
mouths to eat it. Both are thus compelled to wish their 
neighbours ill, and for the same reason : because the con- 
sumer of food cannot take his place by the side of the pro- 
ducer. The direct effect of the dispersion of man is to cause 
vast loss of labour and manure, and to prevent the growth 
of those feelings of kindness that are found where men pos- 
sess the power to concentrate themselves, and to combine 
their efforts for the general good. 

The prosperity of the people of the United States is not due 
to the abundance of land. It exists despite of the necessity 
that has been forced upon them, for squandering their labour 



308 CONCENTRATION AND CENTRALIZATION. 

over the surface of hundreds of millions of acres of poor 
soils, leaving untouched the rich soils that lie beneath. It 
exists, despite of the necessity for living apart, when they 
might have lived in communion with each other, combining 
their exertions for the establishment of better schools, larger 
libraries, better houses and gardens, and all of the thousand 
aids to the development of intellect, of taste, and of the 
affections. It is, in despite of these obstacles, that they have 
schools where every man is educated :* that they have colleges 
and libraries fitted to produce men like Prescott and Bancroft, 
Kent and Story, Irving and Cooper, Norton and Robinson, 
Anthon and Pickering : that mind has been developed in the 
construction of machinery,! enabling them to establish with the 
mistress of the manufacturing world a competition that, more 
than any thing else, has tended to produce the abolition of re- 
straints upon agriculture ; and which in its turn tends now to 
produce a total change in her system and that of the world, by 
aid of which the machinery of exchange will be diminished in 
quantity and perfected in quality : the consumer of Germany, 
Italy, Canada, the United States and India, taking his place 
by the side of the man who produces the food he is to eat. 
With each step in the progress of this change, labour will 
become more and more productive : man will learn more and 
more to concentrate his thoughts and affections upon home : 
he will learn more and more to unite with his fellow man, 
and will acquire daily increasing power over the land and 

* '' In New England, every citizen receives the elementary notions of human 
knowledge ; he is moreover taught the doctrines and the evidences of his re- 
ligion, the history of his country, and the leading features of its constitution. 
In the States of Connecticut and Massachusetts, it is extremely rare to find 
a man imperfectly acquainted with all these things, and a person wholly 
ignorant of them is a sort of phenomenon." — De Tocqueville. 

+ " The Americans possess a quicker mechanical genius than even our- 
selves — as witness their patents and improvements for which we are indebted 
to individuals of that country in mechanics, such as spinning, engraving, &c. 
We gave additional speed to our ships, by improving upon the naval archi- 
tecture of the Dutch ; and the similitude again applies to the superiority 
which, in comparison with British models, the Americans have, for all the 
purposes of activity and economy, imparted to their vessels." — Cobden. 



CONCENTRATION AND CENTRALIZATION. 309 

over himself: and he will become richer and happier, more 
virtuous, more intelligent and more free. 

That the people of the United States should have acquired 
power thus to affect the movements of the world, has been 
due to the fact that they have abstained from war, and pre- 
parations for war, while other nations have wasted millions 
of lives and thousands of millions of treasure on useless 
fleets and armies, and in wars of desolation. That they have 
to so great an extent remained at peace, has been due to the 
fact that the war-making power rested with the whole peo- 
ple : with the men who paid the taxes, each one of whom 
had in his house and lot, his farm, his shop or mill, a little 
saving-fund in which he could deposit his time and money; 
and a home occupied by his wife and children, the deposita- 
ries of his affections. For them to go to war is difficult, 
because with them alone rests the powder to declare it ; and 
before such declaration can take place, a majority in fa- 
vour of such a measure must be obtained. Among them 
is an infinite variety of interests. Some produce corn, 
and some cotton : and others tobacco, or rice. Some ma- 
nufacture wool: others wood or cotton. Some own ships: 
and others steamboats. All these people may lose by 
w^ar, and few can gain much. Under such circumstances, 
before a majority can be obtained, much discussion is 
needed in and out of the newspapers ; in and out of the 
halls of Congress. Time is gained. The arguments for 
and against the w^ar are read abroad as well as at home. 
The cost of war is discussed on both sides, and the value of 
the trade at risk is brought into view : and the result is a 
settlement of the difficulty. Such is the history of the Ore- 
gon and Maine boundary questions. Slow action is safe 
action ; and where a nation takes the form of a pyramid, 
with a great base and very small top, the motion is slow, and 
appears devoid of energy : w^hereas, in one like that of 
France, where the pyramid is inverted, the movement is 
rapid, and energy appears to exist ; but here, as elsewhere, 



310 CONCENTRATION AND CENTRALIZATION. 

the amount of power exerted is in the inverse ratio of the 
time employed. 

It may be suggested that concentration might have a ten- 
dency to prevent the expansion of mind consequent upon the 
existence of the present system, and that men would think 
too much of home, and become selfish. Directly the reverse 
is the effect that is produced in private and in public life. 
The prudent man that is fond of his home, his wife, and his 
children, has leisure to read and to think. The voluptuary 
and the spendthrift have leisure for nothing that tends to the 
expansion of mind. Such we see to be the case in France. 
Every speech in the chambers, and every newspaper, abounds 
in selfish views. If we look back through her history, among 
sovereigns, nobles, leagues, and leaguers, the whole presents 
a picture of selfishness not to be exceeded in the world. If 
we look at the people, it is the same. Expansion of mind 
and liberality of feeling cannot exist where men cultivate the 
poorer soils, for communication is slow and diflScult ; and 
man must mix freely with his fellow man, or he remains a 
barbarian. 

In the course of England we find far less selfishness than 
in that of France ; but it invariably appears during long 
periods of war, like those of India, and that long one 
which closed with the battle of Waterloo. Each step in the 
progress of the latter was marked by growing disregard of 
the rights of man abroad and at home, until neutrals were 
driven from the ocean, and the people of England were 
driven, almost en masse, to the poor-house. If we trace the 
progress of feeling from the days of the Edwards to the pre- 
sent time, we may see growing liberality with increasing 
population. If we look at the kingdom now, we may see 
the intensity of selfishness in many of the highest, and very 
many of the lowest orders : the one owners of extensive 
and ill-cultivated lands, looking to corn laws for support : 
and the other habitues of the gin shop. If we desire to find 
liberality of feeling, it may be met in abundance among 



CONCENTRATION AND CENTRALIZATION. 311 

the middle class of people who rejoice in the comforts of 
home. 

We have shown that in no country does there exist the 
same tendency to concentration of affection, of feeling, of 
action, and of wealth, as in Massachusetts: yet there maybe 
found liberality of feeling in the highest degree. How, in- 
deed, could it be otherwise, when every boy, however poor, 
has in the little library of the town school, towards which his 
father pays his little contribution, and in which the son feels 
himself as much at home as the sons of the wealthiest, books 
that enlighten him in regard to the modes of thinking and act- 
ing throughout the world : and may now, or soon will, read in 
the morning's penny newspaper the history of the proceed- 
ings of the previous evening in every principal town in the 
Union, from New Orleans and St. Louis to the very ex- 
tremity of Maine ? With every diminution in the quantity 
required of the machinery of exchange, whether of things 
or ideas, we find expansion of intellect, liberality of views, 
and the disappearance of selfishness. Concentration, by 
means of which the consumer and the producer are brought 
together, has the same effect in nations as in families ; and if 
we desire to see improvement in moral feeling, in habits of 
kindness, and in the disposition to make exertions for the 
common good, we shall find it as we look more and more 
inward, and endeavour more and more to render pleasant 
that home in which we are placed: in which, but for the in- 
terference of the laws of man with those of the Deity, there 
might in all time past have existed a degree of happiness, 
of which, in most nations, its inhabitants have had but little 
idea. 

Passing southward from Massachusetts, eldest born of the 
family of States, we find, from north to south, and from east to 
west, a tendency in the same directio^n: but diminishing as 
men become more and more scattered, and the fertile soils 
are seen more and more unoccupied. Throughout the whole 
system exists, in a greater or less degree, the tendency to con- 



312 CONCENTRATION AND CENTRALIZATION. 

centration of feeling and affection, as is best shown in the 
existence of twenty-two hundred newspapers, each giving 
to its readers the history of the proceedings of the neigh- 
bourhood ; and in the universal tendency to have in every 
little settlement, schools where the young can meet for in- 
struction ; and places for the worship of the Deity, where all, 
young and old, can meet. The liome stands first; and where 
that is the case, there will be found in the highest degree the 
power of obtaining knowledge relative to things distant from 
home* 

Were France to turn her regards inward instead of out- 
ward, and dispense with fleets and armies, and foreign mis- 
sions, and the numerous other absurdities that characterize 
her system, the expenses of her government need not exceed 
those of the United States. That done, wealth would increase ; 
and her people would cultivate the rich soils instead of the 
poor ones : and population would then advance. The United 
Kingdom contains less than a hundred millions of acres, occu- 
pied by twenty-eight millions of people, and the machinery 
of government that is needed is less than in the United 
States, where twenty-one millions occupy six hundred mil- 
lions of acres ; for where people are concentrated they pro- 
tect themselves : whereas, where they are scattered they re- 
quire protection. Were the expenditure of England reduced 
to five millions of pounds wealth would grow rapidly ; for 
everybody would work, either with his head or his hands : 
and the experience of every day in that country goes to show 

* " I travelled along a portion of the frontier of the United States in a cart 
which was termed the mail. We passed, day and night, with great rapidity, 
along roads which were scarcely marked out, through immense forests. * * * 
From time to time we came to a hut in the midst of a forest, which was a 
post-office. The mail dropped an enormous bundle of letters at the door of 
this isolated dwelling, and we pursued our way at full gallop, leaving the in- 
habitants of the neighbouring log houses to send for their share of the trea- 
sure. * * * It is difficult to imagine the iyicrcdlble rapidity with whicK public 
opinion circulates in the midst of these deserts, I do not think that so much 
intellectual intercourse takes place in the most enlightened and populous districts 
of France.'''' — De Tocqueville 



CONCENTRATION AND CENTRALIZATION. 313 

the rapid improvement of the higher orders, since it has been 
discovered that if men would maintain their places in society 
they must contribute towards its well-being, as the world gives 
nothing for nothing. In no part of the world do all classes, 
from the highest to the lowest, so uniformly labour for the 
advancement of the interests of the society in which they are 
placed, as in Massachusetts : and in none do men who have 
acquired fortune exert so much influence : and simply be- 
cause, with all their fortunes, they continue to work almost 
to the close of life. They are always ready to unite in what 
is needed to be done, and to contribute both time and mo- 
ney to its accomplishment : and society respects them, be- 
cause they promote the good of society. In less enlightened 
parts of the Union, men of wealth do little for the promotion 
of the interests of those around them, and the latter take no 
interest in them. All this may equally be seen by comparing 
the rapidly growing Liverpool wdth the stationary Bristol. 
Concentration tends to promote activity of mind, and that 
activity will exhibit itself more usefully abroad in the precise 
proportion that it manifests itself usefully at home. The na- 
tion that keeps itself poor by efforts in behalf of " the liber- 
ties of Europe," exhibiting to the world a whole people in 
the almshouse, does far less for the extension of freedom 
than it w^ould do w^ere it to mind its own business, and ex- 
hibit the beneficial effects of freedom in universal prosperity 
and happiness. The Parliament that occupies itself with the 
affairs of Spain and Italy, and India and Canada ; and reports 
on coal mines, and drainage, and interments, exhibiting a 
near approach to barbarism ; does less for liberty than a Con- 
gress whose attention is turned exclusively homew^ard, leaving 
the liberties of the world to take care of themselves. The 
influence of the United States upon the world is now greater 
than that of England, because it maintains little army or 
navy ; and its people increase in numbers, and grow" rich by 
minding their own business. True grandeur goes with peace 
and prosperity, and the cultivation of the rich soils of the 
2 R 27 



314 CONCENTRATION AND CENTBALIZATION. 

earth. Littleness and selfishness are the invariable accom- 
paniments of war and the cultivation of the poor soils. 

The highest degree of security for the rights of persons 
and of property that exists in the world is to be found in 
Massachusetts : and it is there obtained at the smallest cost, 
because there the people do most for themselves ; and those 
charged with the duties of government do least. As we pass 
from that State and from New England generally, south and 
west, security diminishes, and the cost increases. In every 
part of the world security diminishes with the increased cost 
of government. The latter is greater in France than in any 
other portion of Europe : and hence ifis that the government 
builds fortifications, and that every man feels that he is sit- 
ting on a volcano that may burst forth at any instant. In 
that country centralization is carried to the highest point; 
while in Massachusetts is shown the perfection of concen- 
tration. In the one, man's necessities are great : while in 
the other, his powers are greatest. 

The PAST says to the landholder of the present : ''If you 
desire that your property increase in value : labour to pro- 
mote the growth of wealth, and the concentration of man for 
the purpose of eating the food where it is produced." 

To the labourer it says : "If you desire a large return to 
your labour ; to live in your own house, or on your own 
farm, eating your food on the ground on which it is pro- 
duced: labour to promote the growth of wealth." 

To all it says : " If you would be free, and happy, and 
rich : labour to promote concentration, whose companions are 
peace and wealth ; and avoid centralization, whose compa- 
nions are poverty and war, followed by the dispersion of 
man over the poor soils of the earth." 



COLONIZATION. 315 



CHAPTER XI. 



COLONIZATION. 



Look to it from what quarter we may, we see the human 
race descending from the great centre of the eastern conti- 
nent, the plateau of Asia, and seeking in the lower lands the 
means of obtaining increased supplies of food ; those first 
cultivated having been, invariably, possessed of the smallest 
quantity of the food-producing properties. Emigration is, 
therefore, in strict accordance with the laws of nature. From 
that point the first people proceed to occupy the land given 
for their use. At every stage of their course we see them 
arresting their march, and stopping to apply themselves to 
the cultivation of the upper and poor soils, and by degrees 
bringing into action the more productive ones. In the in- 
fancy of the stately tree, its roots are short and just beneath 
the surface ; but with each day of its growth we find them 
spreading in all directions further from the trunk, while the 
great tap root descends deep into the lower soils, and both 
unite to give stability to the beautiful mass of branches and 
foliage. Next, we find lateral roots sending up suckers, 
w^hich, like their parent, derive their earliest nourishment from 
the superficial soil : but w^hich, with age repeat the operation 
exhibited in the first, and thus establish new centres of attrac- 
tion for the various elements provided for the support of vege- 
table life. The first still goes on, and as its height increases 
the great root sinks deeper, while the lateral ones still ex- 
tend themselves, and at each step stability is increased. 
Surrounded by its descendants of various ages, diminishing 
in height and their roots in depth as they recede from th»' 
great centre, it forms a perfect double pyramid. 



3J0 COLONIZATION. 

Precisely such is the course of man. He stops and la- 
bours ; and wealth begins to grow. He builds houses ; and 
population and wealth increase. He sends forth the little 
shoots, while the few houses become a town. Wealth and 
population again increase, and he is enabled to descend deeper 
into the earth, from which he derives increased supplies. 
The town becomes a city, whose wealth exerts a force of 
attraction upon the population around, in the ratio which its 
own mass bears to the mass to be acted upon. Upon the 
old and the rich they exert a strong attractive power : but 
upon the young and the active, it is less, and is not unfre- 
quently counteracted by similar yet weaker forces, acting 
in an opposite direction ; and the latter are seen preferring 
the poor soils somewhat distant, which with their small means 
they can cultivate, to the richer soils nearer the centre. The lit- 
tle settlements around become towns, and new roads are made. 
Roads are wealth, and they give value to the poor and still 
more distant lands ; and thus is counterbalanced the attrac- 
tion of the towns, and even of that of the great city, whose 
force is diminished by distance ; and here we find the 
younger and poorer members, whose fortune is in their 
^strength of muscle alone, establishing their abode. Popula- 
tion and wealth continue to grow, and therewith the attractive 
power of the city tends to increase ; but therewith further 
roads continue to be made, and these constituents of wealth 
tend to attract in the opposite direction. Man, therefore, 
like all other matter, once in motion, tends to continue his 
onward course, but is invariably attracted by wealth : and 
thus is he subjected to forces similar to those which keep in 
order the great planetary system : the centripetal and the 
centrifugal : and find him where we may, he will be seen 
advancing towards civilization more or less rapidly, precisely 
in the ratio of the existence and perfect balance of these op- 
posing forces. 

The construction of a little log- cabin in the wilderness is a 
strong inducement to the next settler to take up his abode in 



COLONIZATION. 317 

the neighbourhood. If its owner possess a plough and a 
horse, the attraction of wealth is greatly increased, if the new 
emigrant be less rich. The two combined now attract more 
powerfully, and the third and fourth follow. With each addi- 
tion the attraction becomes stronger, and it is greatly in- 
creased if these last are enabled to add to the stock of wealth, 
oxen and horses, ploughs, harrows, and axes. Population 
increases, and a little store arises, the nucleus of the village 
now about to appear. At another step we find the church 
and the school-house, and with these additions to the wealth 
of the neighbourhood the attraction is felt throughout an in- 
creased extent of country, until neutralized by the counter- 
attraction of other settlements at a distance. That such is 
the course of things may readily be proved by any one who 
w411 trace the growth of towns and cities in the old world or 
the new", where wealth and population grow. 

Such is the natural tendency of things : but man has " sought 
out many inventions." These "inventions" are seen in 
the form of wars, producing taxation ; and in that of regu- 
lation ; for he fancies, not unfrequently, that the laws esta- 
blished by the Deity are insufficient ; and therefore makes, 
perhaps with the best intentions, others totally inconsistent 
with the great natural ones established for his government in 
his relations with his fellow man. These interferences are 
sometimes found existing to an extent so great that wealth 
diminishes : and then increasing poverty is seen to exercise 
a strong repulsive power, and men are compelled to increase 
their distances from each other in the hope to obtain from 
the miserable soils then cultivated, the food necessary for 
the preservation of existence. Thus, we see the poor Arab 
occupying countries that in other days afforded large returns 
to labour, enabling a dense population to obtain abundant 
supplies of the necessaries, comforts, and luxuries of life. 
The same course of events may be seen, on a large scale, in 
the histories of Mexico and India. 

At other times, the repulsive forces are found existing in 

27* 



318 COLONIZATION. 

a degree causing wealth to increase but slowly in its ratio 
to population, and towns and cities then exerting but little 
attractive power : while from the small demand for labour, 
and consequent poverty of the labourer, the mass to be 
attracted is so small that no movement whatsoever is pro- 
duced. In this state of things there wall exist very sight 
tendency towards bringing into activity the stronger and less 
accessible powers of the earth in lands already cultivated ; or 
towards facilitating, by means of roads, the cultivation of 
newer lands : and men will then be seen vegetating where 
they are born ; doing as their fathers did, and living as they 
lived : too poor to emigrate, and almost too poor to live at 
home. Such is the state of things presented by many parts 
of France and southern Germany, where man's necessities 
are great, and his power is small. 

Again, we find taxation and regulation, with but occa- 
sional war. Wealth does grow, but still slowly. The cen- 
tres of attraction exert small force, and the bodies to be 
attracted are generally light, but variable in their capacity 
to obey its influence. If now, more powerful attraction be 
elsewhere established : if wealth accumulate more rapidly 
in a new direction than in the original one : the smaller 
bodies will be first attracted, and the merely labouring po- 
pulation will be drawn in that direction, provided they pos- 
sess within themselves the power of motion : for the mere 
pauper is irresistibly attracted by the spot on which he 
stands.* If the new force continue to increase and the older 
ones remain stationary, the larger masses begin to move, 
and now the mechanic and the small farmer are attracted. 
Another step in the same direction exhibits moving off, the 
larger farmer, and the man possessed of capital to employ 
mechanics : and thus, class after class moves in regular suc- 
cession. Such, precisely, is the case with Ireland. Twenty 
years since, the mere labourer, or the young man of some- 

* See page 155, ante, for the state of things within the limits of the City 
of London. 



COLONIZATION. 319 

what better condition, possessed of nothing but the ability and 
the disposition to work, constituted the only class that fled 
to America. By degrees, the small farmers came, but with 
the rapid growth of wealth on one side and its almost 
stationary condition on the other, each year has witnessed an 
improvement in the class of immigrants ; and now men with 
substantial, but moderate, capitals, are seen to traverse the 
Atlantic with their wives and children : seeking the employ- 
ment for their time, their talents, and their capital, which in 
their father-land cannot be obtained. Again, we may see 
continued peace promoting the rapid growth of wealth and po- 
pulation, and the centres of attraction increasing rapidly and 
producing a strong attractive force ; neutralized, however, 
by taxation for preparation for future wars, and regulation 
by which wealth is rendered stagnant and forced to seek 
abroad the employment denied at home. The force exerted 
is not then in the ratio of its mass. In this state of things, 
railroads, ships, and steamers are constructed, all acting as 
conductors to any existing opposing force. External attrac- 
tion being thus added to internal repulsion, a strong centri- 
fugal force is the result. Such is the condition of England 
in relation to the United States. Her force of attraction 
should have stood first among that of the nations of the 
world, but it has, at all times, been diminished by endless 
taxation for the maintenance of armies ; for the payment of 
interest upon moneys borrowed for the support of armies and 
fleets in past times ; and for the salaries of hosts of officers 
whose services would soon cease to be required were eco- 
nomy to come in fashion : by taxation for the support of an 
immense church establishment : and by endless regulations 
that forbid association, and tend to maintain existing mono- 
polies in land, in trade, in banking, and in every other of the 
pursuits of life. But for them, labour and capital would be 
attracted to England : whereas they are incessantly being ex- 
pelled from it. 
* If we look now to the starting point of European civiliza- 



320 COLONIZATION. 

tion in America, to Massachusetts, we shall find there the 
equilibrium more perfectly established and maintained than 
elsewhere in the world. With a soil naturally sterile for all 
the purposes of agriculture, and destitute of coal, that State 
supports a population of a hundred to the square mile ; bet- 
ter fed, better clothed, better lodged, and better taught than 
any other in existence: and there wealth grows with a rapid- 
ity elsewhere totally unexampled. Perfect freedom to asso- 
ciate has produced the universal habit of association, which is 
there carried to its highest point, and therefore it is that wealth 
tends to remain in the places of its accumulation : in the little 
towns and cities of the State : the result of which is exhi- 
bited in the establishment of an attractive power of prodi- 
gious force. Her neighbours possess better food-producing 
soils, and they have coal and iron, while she has ice and 
granite. Among them, too, wealth grows rapidly: for in all 
may be seen existing, more or less, the same absence of in- 
terference to which is due her rapid growth/ By them is, 
therefore, exercised a force of counter-attraction so great 
that w^ere she by taxation or mischievous regulations to 
produce a repulsive force within, wealth and population 
would both rapidly diminish : and she would be placed in the 
same position relative to them now occupied by Dorset and 
Hampshire, in relation to Lancashire and Yorkshire. In 
her the equihbrium is perfect. Labour and capital never 
emigrate for want of demand at home, but because of a 
somewhat greater (Remand abroad that tempts the young to 
seek elsewhere their fortunes : and hence is it that labour and 
skill are there so liberally rewarded. They make rich soils, 
for they have power to compel the great machine to answer 
to their demands ; and they themselves grow^ rich, while the 
poor emigrant obtains, not unfrequently, little but disease 
and death from the proximity of soils not exceeded in the 
world for their power to afford return to labour ; which yet 
he is unable to subject to the plough. They place the con- 
sumer by the producer. They gather the manure yielded 



COLONIZATION. 321 

by the soils of the west, and by its aid obtain from an acre 
a hundred bushels of corn: while the emigrant, surrounded 
by rich soils, obtains but forty, and sees his product dimi- 
nish yearly, because he returns to the great machine no por- 
tion even of the refuse of its gifts. Here we see exemplified, 
on a great scale, the operation that may, on a small one, be 
found in progress on the farm of every improving farmer. 
He begins on the hill-side, and as he works down to the rich 
soils and abstracts from them their manure, he carries it up 
the hill to enrich the poor ones. The man of Massachusetts 
began on the poor soils of his high and rocky land, but he 
is gradually working his way, by force of wealth, and the 
power and habit of union, into the richer lands of the south ; 
and carrying up the hill, to make a soil, that manure which 
the farmer and planter of the south and west cannot reserve 
even to such extent as to enable them to maintain their soil 
as they found it : still less to improve it. When the latter 
shall have acquired the power of concentration, they will 
keep their manures and improve their soils : but not until 
then. 

By all the advocates of the Ricardo doctrine, the prosperous 
condition of the people of the United States is attributed to 
the abundance of fertile land, yet, in all other countries 
men have been most poor where land was most abundant, 
and where the inhabitants had, apparently, most the choice 
of soils. Fertile land, uncultivated, abounded in the days 
of the Edwards, yet a supply of food was then obtained 
with far more difficulty than now. It is more abundant, by 
far, in Mexico than in the United States, yet inferior food is 
obtained at the cost of far more labour. The whole agricul- 
tural product of Mexico, with a population of eight millions, 
is far less than that of a single American state. It is more 
abundant in Russia, South America, India, Ceylon and 
Brazil, yet in all food is far more scarce. The reason why 
labour is in demand and largely paid is, that peace having 
been maintained, the whole people have been engaged in 
2 S 



322 COLONIZATION. 

the work of production instead of that of carrying muskets 
and sabres, and therefore wealth has rapidly increased. 



Of the correctness of the view we have submitted in re- 
gard to the tendency of wealth to attract population, the 
reader may be fully satisfied by a glance around his own 
neighbourhood, or over his own state or kingdom, reside 
where he may. Such an examination will, we think, result 
in a conviction that the law is universal in its application, as 
are any of the laws of physics. Having so satisfied him- 
self, he will be prepared to accompany us in an examination 
of the several systems of colonization now in progress : the 
Enghsh, French, American and African. 

That which now chiefly occupies the English mind is the 
one based on Mr. Ricardo's doctrine of the value of land, 
and which was first introduced about fifteen years since, in 
a work entitled England and America. It was there shown, 
as the writer thought, that the system of the United States 
tended to scatter population too widely : that land was 
sold too cheap, and that the people would be more prosper- 
ous if the government took from them a larger amount 
of their capital, by way of facilitating them in the work of 
clearing the timber and draining the meadows. In that 
and other works subsequently published, it was also shown 
that England possessed, in her colonies, a vast quantity of 
land of the best description, capable of yielding a large re- 
turn to labour : and that nothing was needed to render it 
highly valuable but that <« a sufficient price" should be put 
upon it, the proceeds of sales to be expended in transporting 
labourers to the land. The idea took rapidly, and coloniza- 
tion became the rage. To buy land at from 125. to 205. 
per acre, and to apply the purchase-money to the transport of 
labourers, and by this simple process to render it as valuable 
as that which at home would command a hundred pounds 



COLONIZATION. 323 

an acre, was abundantly captivating. The «< political econo- 
mists" were highly delighted with it, and books containing 
the most glowing descriptions of the vast wealth certain to 
be realized, were published. The only difficulty appeared 
to be that of determining what was the price at which it 
would not be too cheap.* High-priced land was deemed most 
likely to secure high wages to the labourers.! Men of fortune 
invested their w^hole means in carrying out colonists and 
implements of husbandry. Companies w^ere formed for 
northern and southern, eastern and western, Australia ; for 
New Zealand, north and south ; and immense grants of territory 
were obtained from the government : coupled, however, with 
the condition that the proceeds were to go to ridding the 
country of that portion of its population which w^as held to 
be surplus; that portion w^hose necessities were great, and 
whose powers were small. 

There exists in England a large class that in the United 
States constitutes the most useful of all classes, and that 
would be so everywhere, if permitted : but which there 
occupies a most uncomfortable position. It is the class of 
small capitalists : men who have time, and talents, and 
labour, that they would desire to employ ; and a small 
amount of capital that would enable them to render their 
time and labour profitable to themselves, and highly so to 
society, if opportunity could be found. Being, how^ever, 
surrounded by monopolies, some of which result from law 
and others from custom, while a third and great class results 
from the concentration of the ownership of land ; that oppor- 
tunity cannot be found, and time, talents, education, and 
capital, hang heavily on their hands. They are too large 
for labourers, and too small to be large farmers, and the 



* "Land in the new colony, instead of being extravagantly dear, would be 
remarkably cheap at £2 = $9 60, per acre." — Torrens. 

-j- i( Wages must be higher in the new Australian colony than in the old 
Australian colonies, as long as waste land shall continue to be sold at a higher 
price in the new than in the old." — Ibid. 



324 



COLONIZATION. 



land-owner will have none of them. They are too small to 
become cotton manufacturers by themselves, and the law 
forbids their association for becoming such, by regulations 
that tend to destroy the habit of union. They are too small 
for bankers, and the law surrounds associations for banking 
purposes with penalties that secure to great bankers and 
great speculators a monopoly of that trade. They are too 
large for shopmen, and too small to command what is called 
«'a connection." They are too large for curates, and too 
small for bishops : too large for apothecaries, and too small 
for doctors : too large to go before the mast, and too small to 
obtain a place in the cabin : and this applies to almost every 
pursuit in life, the consequence of which is that they are 
known as «« the uneasy class" of society. To the difficulty 
which such men find in obtaining employment for their time 
and their means is due the fact that heavy bonuses are given 
for employment accompanied with small but certain re- 
muneration ; the party thus sinking his capital in exchange 
for an annuity to be earned by the application of his labour : 
that such large sums are given for presentations in the church : 
that good- wills in shops, banking houses, &c., command so 
high a price : and to this is likewise due the vast amount of 
business transacted by life insurance offices, whose profits 
are derived from managing the capital of thousands who, if 
they were permitted, would manage it far better themselves. 
Throughout that country abound clever and well-informed 
men with moderate means, who are willing to abandon all 
hope of rising in the world, and to sell themselves for life, 
for small fixed incomes : one of the strongest evidences of 
unsoundness in the system. The same thing may be found 
in portions of the United States. Its extent is very limited 
where population is most dense, and men are seen obtaining 
large returns from the originally poor soils : but it increases 
as we pass south and west, towards those parts where land 
is abundant, and where men obtain a poor subsistence from 
poor soils, while surrounded by rich ones that they cannot 



COLONIZATION. 325 

cultivate. The more perfect the power of man over land, 
the greater is his power over himself, and the less is he 
disposed to confine himself to the effort towards maintaining 
his condition : abandoning the hope of improving it. 

To this class, the discovery of the new principle of colo- 
nization was a god-send. Their time and their capital were 
almost unproductive. Instead of three per cent, consols, 
they could have hundred per cent, lands. Home had many 
attractions, but their situation, on the whole, was uneasy. 
They were, in many cases, gentlemen in feeling and charac- 
ter, but at home they could not live as became gentlemen. 
In Australia, they could have farms consisting of the most 
fertile lands, with rent-paying tenants, and employ their own 
time in hunting or fishing, reading or writing ; while their 
wives and daughters could amuse themselves with music and 
drawing. The prospect was immeasurably attractive, and 
accordingly the offices were besieged by applicants for land. 
Clergymen and half-pay officers sold out and invested their 
little fortunes in certificates that were to entitle them to fer- 
tile soils somewhere : but where, they knew, and apparently 
cared, not. That it was land appeared to be all-sufficient 
for them. Lawyers and doctors, with small capitals and 
smaller practice, w^ere eager to settle in this new El Dorado, 
where they might combine the profits of professional occupa- 
tion with a little rent-roll, and pass downwards through life 
in the enjoyment of a good table, garnished with old wine. 
Farmers threw up their leases, preferring to constitute them- 
selves rent-receivers, and thus becoming gentlemen of lei- 
sure, instead of remaining rent-payers. Small traders, me- 
chanics, and men of every class in society, purchased prizes 
in the new and grand lottery. Ships were laden with furni- 
ture, books, pictures, materials for drawing, pianos, music, 
flutes, fishing tackle, fowling-pieces, and all other of the ap- 
pliances necessary for the enjoyment of perfect happiness. 
Delicate and highly educated women, wives and daughters, 
embarked for Australia, confident that they should find in the 

28 



326 COLONIZATION. 

enjoyment of perfect repose, ample amends for the loss of the 
society of the friends of their youth. With their arrival in 
the colony, the beautiful vision disappeared. The fertile 
lands were inaccessible, and those which were accessible 

'^ w^ere worthless, except for sheep-runs. High and dry lands, 
without trees, were abundant : and bottom-lands, covered 
with timber that they could not fell, were equally so. Both 
were to them equally valueless. Labour was scarce and high, 
for the order of things had been inverted, and the capitalist 
had gone ahead of the labourer : the true emigrant. Ladies 
and gentlemen had to wait on themselves. Li short, all the 
troubles, and difficulties, and annoyances, so well described 
by Mrs, Kirkland in her admirable account of the '« New 
Home," were experienced by these deluded and unfortunate 
colonists ; the only difference being that their's were tenfold 
greater than her's. They had pianos and harps in abundance, 
but they required only axes and spades, pots and kettles. 
The bubble burst, and all that remained was blighted hope, 
accompanied by a consciousness of having wasted fortune in 
pursuit of an ignis fatuus. They were blind, and they had 
permitted themselves to be led by the blind. 

The whole history of these colonies is one of endless dis- 
putes and troubles. The Government would take them into 
its care. Governors who knew little were appointed by se- 
cretaries who knew less, and they not unfrequently evinced 

* a total want of capacity for the performance of their own 
duties, and an equal want of respect for the rights of others. 
As colonial secretaries had shown themselves determined to 
be masters, and determined not to permit officers and directors 
of associations for the promotion of the great scheme to ex- 
ercise the powers of government, the latter were glad to throw 
upon the shoulders of the former the burden of failure that 
necessarily resulted from its own inherent defects ; and a 
scene of wrangling has ensued, resulting in leaving it some- 
what doubtful with the public whether the fault was in the 
projection, or in the carrying out of the scheme. All that is 



COLONIZATION. 327 

generally known is, that a vast number of people have been 
ruined by the purchase of farms that are totally worthless : that 
"accommodation land," as it is termed, i. e., land that was 
calculated for the supply of beans and peas to towns which 
never existed, was sold in lots of two, or three, or five 
acres, at enormous prices by lucky speculators ; that the go- 
vernment itself retailed lots, a dozen at a time, at prices 
worthy almost of Liverpool and Manchester, in towns that 
scarcely existed but on paper : that those prices were paid 
because "the original and inexhaustible powers of the soil" 
were so great that population and wealth must so rapidly 
increase that it was difficult to tell to what size these towns 
and cities might not grow ; and that, therefore, the govern- 
ment thought it inexpedient to wholesale them. Concentra- 
tion, too, was the order of the day. Men must not be per- 
mitted to exercise the right of self-government so far as to 
judge for themselves where they w^ould place their houses, or 
their stores. Land was fixed at so high a price that they 
might be compelled to remain together, and thus their powers 
were diminished, that their powers might become greater. 
Such was the scheme that lured to Australia tens of thou- 
sands of accomplished men and women, possessed of mo- 
derate competence. Many have died, while very many have 
returned beggars from this land of promise. The thing is 
dead, never again to be revived, though many even yet write 
about it. But few weeks have elapsed since the necessity for 
a new and grand plan of emigration was urged on the govern- 
ment, and by men standing high in the political and econo- 
mical world : to the exceeding terror of the poor Canadians, 
who dreaded to see a repetition of the horrors of Australia. 

The number of people transported to the wilderness was 
great, and the amount of capital sunk in the speculation was 
enormous. The larger the amount of property sent to the colo- 
ny, the greater was held to be the profit of the mother country. 
Tables of exports were printed, showing how large a market 
h'vd been secured : but imports there were none. It was all 



328 COLONIZATION. 

pure loss. For some years past emigration has, fortunately 
for the colonies, wholly ceased. They will now proceed in 
the natural way, cultivating the lands that are accessible and 
using others as sheep-walks, by which means they will ar- 
rive in time to be respectable members of the British colo- 
nial family ; and at some future period they may become 
sufficiently wealthy to attract further emigration, which now 
they are not. 

The scheme failed because it was in direct opposition to 
the laws of nature : and to the lessons of the past. The wil- 
derness offers little attraction to the labourer and still less to 
the capitalist, large or small. In all successful colonization, 
the former is found just ahead of the houses, and towns, and 
roads of his predecessors, and if he pass too far ahead, he 
starves. He prepares the way for the little capitalist who is 
willing to pay some one for clearing a little land, and build- 
ing a log-house ; and the latter, in his turn, smooths the way 
for one a little larger : but all must keep within sight and hear- 
ing of their predecessors. No one voluntarily goes upon land 
that has not already acquired some little value by the appli- 
cation of some labour in the construction of communications. 
The first settler adds a little to that value by preparing a few 
acres of land and building the house. The second increases 
it, and thus it rises in time, from being absolutely worthless, to 
becoming worth something, and passes gradually from one 
or two, to six, eight, or ten dollars per acre ; but in no case 
w^ill it exchange for as much labour as it would cost to place 
it in the same condition, were it again reduced to its original 
state ; and the reason that it will not do so is that with every 
step in the progress of wealth and population better soils can 
be obtained with less labour. That which is now required 
for combining the lime with the clay, is not one-fifth as great 
as was first expended in clearing and enclosing the poor 
clay : yet the new soil thus produced is of treble power. 

We know of no case in which the emigration of capitalists 
has been successful. Few men have undertaken the work, 



COLONIZATION. 329 

possessed of greater advantages for the work than the founder 
of Pennsylvania, yet he sunk nearly his whole fortune in the 
operation. He received the grant in payment of a debt of 
^£30,000, and after having, in twenty years, expended 
^£52,000, he had received less than .£20,000 : leaving him 
minus above £62,000, for which he offered to receive £12,000 
from the government, and relinquish his claim. The Swedes 
and Dutch had preceded him, and thus paved the way for 
his arrival. Without this, his loss would have been vastly 
greater. The same experiment has been tried in other colo- 
nies, and always with the same result. One of the Peel 
family, a few years since, undertook the business of coloni- 
zation, and sunk, we think, about £70,000 in a few short 
months. At Sydney ; in Van Diemen's land ; and in that other 
colony of Norfolk Island, fitly designated as " a hell upon 
earth," the only title to which it can fairly lay claim ; the 
State has been the great capitalist, and were it now to sell 
out, it would be found that had it been an enterprise of pri- 
vate capitalists they would have been ruined had they pos- 
sessed the fortunes of the Barings, the Rothschilds, and 
Astor, and fifty more such, united. Australia would not 
now sell, in the market of the world, for one-twentieth of its 
cost. The difference has been paid out of taxes on tea, 
coffee, sugar, beer, &c., by which men were impoverished 
and driven to crime, to prepare them for the new colony fit- 
ting for their reception. 

Neither is it possible, as we believe, to find an instance of 
the emigration of people able and willing to labour, to an 
entirely new country, that has been successful ; except where 
they were animated by something more than the mere de- 
sire of wealth : and the efforts of colonists not so animated 
have always failed, except where supported out of taxation 
upon the people who remained behind. The French colonies 
were supported by the government, or they failed. The first 
emigrants to Oregon would have starved, but for the exist- 
ence of the settlements of the Hudson's Bay Company. The 
2 T 28* 



330 COLONIZATION. 

recent emigrants to California would have been in the same 
condition but for the existence of a certain amount of wealth, 
in cleared and cultivated lands, in oxen and mules, and 
houses, belonging to the earlier settlers. The settlement of 
South Africa, a few years since, was a failure as complete as 
was that at the Belize, where many of the settlers starved in 
view of the richest lands of the world, which they had not 
means to clear and occupy. The Swedes made no progress, 
nor did the cavaliers of Virginia, and therefore was it that 
the latter requires slaves. The South Carolina settlement, 
planned by Locke, with its caciques and its various absurd 
machinery, was an entire failure. That such is the case, is the 
consequence of a great law of nature which forbids that man 
should profit by the superior soils until he has won them by 
severe labour, for which they are the reward. The settler in 
Mississippi cultivates the poor land on the hill in full view 
of the river bottom, because the scrub-pine is more easily 
removed than the oak ; and because he knows that if it were 
even in his power to remove the latter, the land on which it 
is growing is wet, and he has not the means to drain it : and 
that he should be ruined in the attempt. He obtains a bare 
subsistence from the poor soil on which he works, because 
he can sometimes sell his labour to a neighbour, or borrow a 
plough or a horse, or sell wood to a steamboat : and were he 
deprived of the advantages thus resulting from the existence 
of other wealth than his own, he would starve. What induce- 
ment, then, can man have to go out of sight and hearing of 
his fellow man ? He is everywhere, when permitted, seen 
seeking union with him, and deriving aid and comfort from 
that union. He finds the greatest demand for his labour 
where that union is rendered possible by the existence of 
wealth : for without it there can be none. In the wilderness, 
he finds land, and land only, which is not wealth, and it 
can therefore exert no attractive power. The more he has 
of it, the poorer he is. Left to himself, then, man will never 
seek it, unless the desire of emancipation from tyranny over 



COLONIZATION. 331 

his thoughts or his actions induce him to submit to the priva- 
tions incident thereto. That, and that alone, enabled the 
Pilofrims to endure the horrors of the first winter on the bleak 
shores of Massachusetts Bay. 

The author of this plan of colonization saw, and saw 
truly, in the tendency of the people of the United States to 
scatter themselves over the wild lands of the west, a cause 
of poverty and not of wealth. He saw that concentration 
was needed, but he erred in regard to the means by which 
it should be sought. He assumed that man always selected 
first the rich soils : although he might have seen remaining 
uncultivated in the old states, millions of acres of rich 
lands, while men passed westward to cultivate prairie lands, 
where water is almost a luxury. Had he seen the true cause 
of man thus squandering his labour in the wilderness of 
America, he would have found the true remedy for the 
apparent over-population of Britain ; but this he did not see, 
and therefore was it that he was led to attribute the waste 
of labour to excess in the exercise of the right of self- 
government : whereas the true reason was to be found in the 
almost total absence of the existence of any power to deter- 
mine for themselves where they would live and where they 
would not. They would have preferred remaining at home with 
their relative and friends, but the misdirection of the wealth 
and labour of England produced a repulsive force, driving 
them abroad to seek in the wilderness that which home 
would not afford : and therefore was it that they went west 
to obtain ten bushels of wheat per acre, leaving behind land, 
unoccupied, that would have given almost as many tons of 
})Otatoes, the manure from which would have enriched the 
poor soils already in cultivation. These they could not 
raise because too bulky for transportation, and there existed 
no market for milk, eggs, veal or beef: and therefore was it 
that they sought the west where they could obtain Indian 
corn, which, being converted into pork, might perhaps be 
received by England in payment for shirts and pantaloons. 



332 COLONIZATION. 

The author of the scheme saw that concentration was 
needed on the one side of the Atlantic, and therefore was it 
that he proposed de- concentration of the people of the oppo- 
site side, to be followed by forced concentration in the 
southern hemisphere. Men were to be deprived of the 
right of selecting for themselves, and to that end land was to 
be fixed high : and they were to be made to pay twenty or 
forty shillings an acre for that for which man had done 
nothing, while for that in the Western States for which man 
had already done much in the form of communications, the 
government asked but five shillings. That he should so 
far have erred is extraordinary : but that so many thousands 
should have risked their fortunes and happiness on such a 
scheme is far more so. 

The colonial system of England has been, and is, hei 
greatest curse. To acquire, and to retain, colonial subjects : 
for as equals they have never been regarded : wealth has 
been expended that would have made of every field in the 
United Kingdom a garden from which the occupant, enabled 
by its aid to bring into activity the better soils, would have 
drawn an amount of food thrice exceeding what the poorer 
ones have given him. So applied, it would have been attended 
with a vast increase of wealth and population, and the roads 
would long since have afforded facilities of communication 
almost equalling those of the present day. To wars for 
colonies may be attributed the whole of the present enor- 
mous debt with which she is burthened ; and by the weight 
of which she will be distanced in the race she has now to 
run, with a people who, bone of her bone and flesh of her 
flesh, have no such load to carry. To retain them now, she 
maintains an immense army and a prodigious fleet, requiring 
taxes to an extent that tends to produce repulsion and to 
drive abroad both man and wealth that should remain at 
nome. 

Were she at once to grant to every colony the right of 
self-government, a fleet as large as that of the United States 



COLONIZATION. 333 

would perform all the duties of maintaining the police of the 
ocean, and no army whatsoever would be needed. She 
would thus save twelve millions, and in such a case a penny- 
saved is more than a penny gained. That sum is the inte- 
rest of four hundred millions, or half of her whole debt. 
The vast sums now wasted on preparations for war would 
speedily extinguish that debt; and were its reduction once 
fairly commenced each man would feel himself lightened 
of a load, while the increase of his productive power would 
enable him to bear more easily that portion which remained. 
Wealth would grow with greatly increased rapidity, and its 
application to agriculture and to the extension of roads and 
railroads would produce an increased demand for labour, 
with increase of wages tending to enable the labourer to 
improve his physical, moral, and intellectual condition. 
Population would then increase more rapidly, and the 
demand would grow more rapidly than the supply. Every 
new appropriation of capital to a road would produce farther 
demand for capital for engines and cars ; for ploughs, and 
spades, and pickaxes, and tiles, and lime, and marl, and 
houses, and shops, and saw-mills, and grist-mills: and then 
everybody, labourer and capitalist, would have reason to be 
content, for the value of capital would rise with the increased 
demand at home, resulting from the habit of looking 
towards home ; and from the growih of the power of the 
great food-producing machine. We now see the three per 
cents., which were for a long time worth 107, selling at 80. 
With each step in the progress of freedom, mere annuities, 
whether for the use of capital or labour, would be less 
sought after, and consols would, and will, fall to 70, and 
perhaps far less. 

Those who doubt this may satisfy themselves by looking 
to the continent, and seeing at how low a rate money is, 
and in times past has been, supplied to governments in some 
of the poorer countries of Europe. When their trade shall 
become more free wealth will increase more rapidly, and th 



334 COLONIZATION. 

rate of interest will rise as it has done in England. Govern- 
ments will then dispense with armies and wars, for both will 
become more costly. The capitalist will then have larger 
profits, for he will manage his own capital : and the labourer 
will have larger wages, for he will manage his own labour. 
The true interests of both are therefore identical, and nothing 
can injure one without equally injuring the other. The price 
of money rose during the long war, but the price of commo- 
dities advanced in a more rapid ratio, and the capitalist 
received less in quantity while receiving more in proportion. 
The interest of jGIOO will now purchase twice the amount 
of comfort that it would have done when consols were at 48. 
Freed from the burden of colonies, any and everywhere, 
she would need no army abroad and she would require none 
at home, because increasing prosperity resulting from the 
abolition of taxes, would be attended by increased disposi- 
tion for the performance of duties, and increased respect for 
the rights of others, among the whole people, tc Strikes" 
would become less abundant among those who work, because 
tax-gatherers and receivers ; and pensioners, and sinecurists, 
and admirals, — red, blue, and yellow ; the class which pre- 
fers not to work : would be less numerous. She would need 
no army for home defence, for harmony would prevail 
throughout the whole system, taking the place of existing dis- 
cord ; and millions of men, feeling that they had rights, and 
possessing over their neighbours the same advantages that 
enabled a few thousand yeomen, at Cressy and Poictiers, to 
triumph over the countless mob of princes, nobles, and gen- 
tlemen to whom they were opposed, would be at all times 
ready to defend their homes, their wives and children ; while 
railroads would enable her, at a moment's notice, to place them 
where their services were needed. Her apparent strength 
would be less, but her real strength would be far greater; 
and it would increase with prodigious rapidity. Wealth is 
strength, as has been shown, time after time, by the people 
of the Netherlands and Holland, and of the free cities of Ger- 



COLONIZATION. 335 

many, in their ability to defend themselves against the in- 
vading armies of France : and as would have been shown by 
Italy, had she not possessed within her bosom, in the Church, 
a power deriving from abroad its ability to produce division 
and weakness at home. Wealth results, not from the labour 
of men who carry muskets, but from that of those who carry 
spades and pickaxes : and if the former do not give wealth, 
they cannot give strength, physical, moral, intellectual, or 
political. Ten millions spent in railroads give more strength : 
more power of self-protection and advancement : than could 
be given by all the fleets and armies of the world assembled 
at a cost of hundreds of millions. 

Were the millions now thus spent applied throughout 
Great Britain to improving the great food-producing machine, 
the result would be a constant increase in the power to make 
more roads ; to cultivate still better soils ; to participate in the 
advantages of union for the maintenance of perfect security at 
home, and against interference from abroad; and to unite for 
the dissemination of instruction throughout the whole body of 
the people : tending thus to make them feel that they could 
protect themselves, and that without either fleets or armies. 
Seeing this, none would venture even to hint invasion. In- 
stead of fort-building, and " great activity in the dock-yards," 
such as has been seen even within the last three years, forts 
would be dismantled and their cannon would be melted, 
wMe the vast machinery of the dock-yards would be applied 
to the production of machines destined for the improvement, 
and not for the destruction, of man. With every step in the 
progress towards increased wealth and population, causes of 
quarrel would diminish, while the self-defensive power would 
be increased. She is now indisposed to quarrel with the 
United States, because they are populous and rich ; but she 
feels small annoyance at a dispute with the scattered people 
of Buenos Ayres, who have land in abundance, and therefore 
cultivate the poorest soils. The people of the United States 
use spades and ploughs. They dispense with armies and 



336 COLONIZATION. 

fleets, and hence their self-protective power. Were they to 
adopt the conscription for land and naval service^, and the 
endless taxation of France, they v^ould soon become as weak 
as France. That power has alw^ays maintained the largest 
armies in Europe ; and she has, with the exception of Eng- 
land, expended most largely on her fleets, and to what pur- 
pose ? From the days of Rollo to those of Blucher and Wel- 
lington, she has shown herself, when the time of trial came, 
almost incapable of self-defence, whether on her land or on 
her sea frontier. The tendency of her whole system has been 
to take from the labourer the wealth that he produced, and 
give to those w^ho did not labour the disposal of it, and they 
have invariably disposed of it to suit their own purposes. 

Such, too, has been the tendency of the colonization sys- 
tem of England. It has given to secretaries and those who 
desired to be secretaries ; admirals and generals, and those 
who sought to place themselves at the head of fleets and 
armies; the disposal of wealth that they had not laboured to 
produce : and the consequence has been waste, for no man 
economizes in the expenditure of that for which he does not 
work. Nor has that been the only mode in which such effect 
has been, and is now being, produced. Large sums have 
been forced to the West India islands, to be managed — and 
mismanaged — by agents. There, wealth did not grow: 
and population was diminished because of the denial to the 
slave of the comforts necessary for his physical and moral 
improvement : and necessary to increase of numbers. Large 
sums go to Canada, for the construction of canals, forts, &c., 
to be expended by those who take no part in their produc- 
tion. Large sums have gone to Australia, and those who 
desire to understand the mode of obtaining small results with 
great means, may study with advantage the proceedings 
of several of the governors. Large sums are on their way 
to India, to make railroads ; but those who are to spend 
them are not those who labour to produce them.^The whole 
system of colonization tends to withdraw capital from the 



COLONIZATION. 337 

control of its owner, and diminishes in that respect the power 
of self-government ; and by that it may be judged. When 
wealth is permitted freely to be invested, it stays at home ; 
as is the case in New England to an extent unknown in the 
world : and it is so, simply because every man has near him 
a little money-shop, or manufacturing establishment, in which 
he invests his twenty, fifty, or one hundred dollars, as 
fast as earned, preparatory to the purchase of a little farm ; 
the opening of a shop ; or the establishment of a little fac- 
tory ; and by the very act making a market for his further 
accumulations : enabling the farmer to sink deeper into the 
rich soil, to increase his products, and to become a customer 
to the new store. Wealth, there, drops gently as the dew, 
and everywhere produces the same effect in affording life 
and nourishment to all, the little and the great : stimulating 
the one to exertion that he may become great, and the other 
to increased exertion that he may maintain his position. If 
we look to other parts of the Union, we shall see States with- 
drawing capital from the control of their owners, to be 
wasted in making canals and railroads that would have 
been profitable had they been made by the men who la- 
boured to produce the means by which they were made : for 
then they would have been made economically. Pennsylva- 
nia has, by restriction, driven wealth out of the State, to 
be sunk in banks and railroads in Mississippi : while borrow- 
ing the capital which Englishmen were not permitted to use 
at home to make their own roads and canals. What has been 
the consequence ? Waste, loss, and ruin — temporary at least 
— every where. /If, now, we inquire who have been the small- 
est losers by the calamitous events of the past ten years, we 
shall find them among the people of New England — the men 
w^ho cultivate the hardest soil in the Union : that which would 
appear to afford the least chance for profitable investment : 
that which produces ice and granite in abundance, but 
affords no coal. There wealth increases more rapidly than 
elsewhere in the world ; and there it tends most to remain 
2U 29 



338 COLONIZATION. 

under the direct and immediate control of the owner. Nev- 
ertheless, the Yankees are the greatest colonists in the world; 
and there are none so ready to drive a railroad through New 
York or Ohio, or to seize on the profits of a speculation in 
opium, or in bird's-nests : but when they do so, they take 
care that the men who manage their concerns abroad shall 
be owners like themselves, directly interested in the result.* 
The great capitalist needs the aid of the small one who has 
little but his time and talent to sell ; and hence the latter 
can always find a market for that time and talent, and has 
always before him the knowledge that he can rise if he will. 
He goes abroad, to stay permanently in Illinois, or tempora- 
rily in Canton or the Sandwich Islands, not because he must, 
but because he will. His self-government is perfect, because 
that of the capitalist is so ; and hence it is that colonization, 

* "No fact which I have met with has so much surprised me as the extra- 
ordinary diffusion of the American commerce, and the great spirit of enter- 
prise manifested by them. In many places, where the British merchants can 
find no commerce apparently worth their attention, the Americans carry on a 
lucrative and prosperous trade ; and, in half-civilized countries, where the 
largest profits are always realized, the Americans are so eminently successful, 
that the British merchant cannot attempt to compete with them. 

" This appears to arise from the following circumstance : — The masters of 
the American vessels engaged in this kind of trade are, in many instances, 
whole, and, in all other instances, part, owners of the vessel and cargo ; 
whereas masters of English vessels have frequently little or no interest in the 
vessel and cargo ; and are, moreover, frequently tied down by directions from 
the firm for whom they act. The difference between these two cases is very 
great. The American can turn every circumstance that occurs to account ; 
he can instantly enter into any speculation that holds out a prospect of suc- 
cess ; and can act with rapidity and decision, on his own responsibility. The 
English master, on the contrary, has usually a prescribed line of duty to fulfil, 
from which he cannot vary." * * * 

" While this port (Mombas, on the east coast of Africa,) was in the pos- 
session of the English, but one British merchant vessel arrived there, yet three 
American vessels entered the harbour. The master of the English vessel was 
not a part owner — the Americans were all part owners, and carried on a lu- 
crative trade, shipping a large quantity of ivory ; whereas the English master 
was placed in a very unpleasant position ; for, owing to the orders he had re- 
ceived from his owners, he had not been able to ship a cargo suited to the 
market of Mombas; and if Lieut. Emery had not kindly cashed a bill for 
him, the speculation would have been a total failure." — Greyh Expeditions 
in South Australia. 



COLONIZATION. 339 

both of labour and of capital, goes on with such rapidity 
where the tendency to local investment is so great. In no 
part of the world are the necessities of man so small : in 
none are his powers so great. 

Such w^ould become the case in England, were colonies 
abandoned, fleets sold, and armies disbanded. There would, 
however, be no more dividends of Indian taxes collected 
on the principle of Mr. Ricardo, and called rents as an ex- 
cuse for grinding the poor wretch who is already so reduced 
by taxation that he cultivates the earth unaided by spade, 
reaping-hook, cart, horse, or mule; who then divides the pro- 
duce equally betw^een himself and the collector of rents ; then 
gives half the balance for the privilege of eating a little salt 
in his bread ; and finally pounds the grain with a stone, for 
want of a mill : yet happy if, after affording him a handful 
of rice per day, the balance be sufficient to enable him at 
occasional intervals to -purchase a rag to cover his naked- 
ness. Neither would there be so large a number of profita- 
ble offices to divide among younger sons of wealthy land- 
owners, but fathers would then see the necessity of provid- 
ing for the children whom they had begotten for their own 
good pleasure ; and the small landholder, cultivating his 
ow^n little farm for his own profit, and therefore w^ell culti- 
vating it, would gradually replace the great landholder and 
his great son, the poor cornet of dragoons, or navy lieute- 
nant, execrating the peace and hoping for war, plunder, 
and promotion ; and that other son wdio seeks employment 
in the Church as the best means of advancing his condition 
in life, and watches eagerly for the death of the incumbent 
of his father's wealthy parish ; or pays a large price for the 
privilege of participating during the week with the farmer by 
aid of the forced division of crops which he has not laboured 
to produce, while teaching on Sunday the great lesson, <' do 
unto jour neighbours as ye would that they should do unto 
you." Rents w^ould then rise rapidly in amount, but the 
proportion w^hich they would bear to the product w^ould de- 



340 COLONIZATION. 

crease rapidly. The man who worked would produce more 
and would take a larger proportion of that increased quan 
tity as the reward of the labour and skill expended : while 
he who did not work, although receiving more in amount, 
would find the standard of living rise more rapidly than his 
means, and would see that if he did nothing — if he stood 
still while the rest of the earth moved — he would be left be- 
hind in the race. The class of great men ; and the uneasy 
class, with good blood in their veins, and little money in their 
pockets ; and the pauper class : all of them, in all ages and 
nations, the disturbers of the world : w^ould disappear, and 
the happy and prosperous class ; the lovers of peace and har- 
mony; of labour, physical and intellectual; of instruction, 
secular or religious ; of wealth, as a means towards the 
attainment of a great end, and not as the end itself; of that 
equality which secures to all men the exercise of those rights 
which they desire to enjoy themselves, — and secures it in the 
ratio of their performance of their own duties ; — would daily 
increase in number : and with that increase would England 
grow for ages in population and wealth : leaving it for future 
advocates of the Malthusian theory to determine how many 
centuries were to elapse before it would become necessary 
to establish w^hat is called " systematic colonization," by 
which is meant the substitution of the will of the few who 
administer the governeQent and expend capital w^hich they 
do not labour to produce, "for that of the many who do labour 
and wish to be permitted to determine for themselves where 
they will be employed, and what they w^ill do with their 
wages. Systematic colonization means nothing but the forced 
export of men who would live at home if they could, and 
who could do so if taxation and regulation permitted ; and 
its advocates will invariably be found among those who de- 
rive their means of support from the proceeds of taxation, 
regulation, and monopoly. 

It is impossible to look at England, or Scotland, without 
seeing that all this is now going on. The landlord is waking 



COLONIZATION. 341 

up to the fact that he is losing his place in society, and that if 
he would keep it he must work, and his capital must work. 
His rents increase, but the standard of living rises and he must 
economize, or his rents will cease to grow. The outlet for his 
sons in the army, and navy, and church, and colonies, is be- 
coming daily less, and children and grandchildren become 
more numerous, and fewer of them die off. He must provide 
for them, for the people will not. Wars are not as profitable as 
heretofore : and the prospect is that in the lapse of a little time 
they will cease to occur. Cotton manufacturers, and spin- 
ners and traders' sons, are now at the head of affairs, and 
they have small respect for men who are fond of spoil, 
whether in the form of the plunder of a city, or of a treasure- 
ship : or in that of tithes. They are, it is true, the repre- 
sentatives of the past unsound commercial policy, but they 
are far better than the men who represented her military 
policy. Both, however, are part and parcel of the same 
system, and both will eventually disappear. All are learning 
to work, the consequence of which is that at no time were the 
better soils so rapidly brought into cultivation ; at no time 
has the reward of labour so rapidly increased : and at no 
time has there been seen so strong a tendency to the ap- 
proach of the period when every man would feel that con- 
sideration by the world is the reward of service rendered to 
the world by the exercise of physical and mental faculties : 
and that if he desire to eat and drink largely, he must work 
steadily and devotedly : but at no time has the reward of 
service been so great. The habit of labour brings the habit 
of peace ; the sense of security ; the love of literature and 
art ; the happy home, and the leisure for its enjoyment, 
rendered doubly grateful by the necessity for exertion of the 
faculties of mind and body at other times and elsewhere. 
The great landholder no longer vegetates. His wife no 
longer dies of ennui. Every faculty of mind and body is 
stimulated into action, and man is now learning to live by 
helping those around to live. With each step in this pro 

29* 



342 COLONIZATION. 

gress, the power of man over land, and over himself, will 
grow : food will become more abundant : and schemes of 
colonization will tend to disappear. 



More than ten centuries have elapsed since France com- 
menced the work of colonization, under Pepin and Charle- 
magne : substituting the barbarities of the feudal system for the 
peaceful government of the Lombards, under which northern 
Italy was then rapidly advancing towards civilization. From 
that day to the present she has sent colonies throughout 
Italy, and into Spain, the Netherlands, Holland, and Ger- 
many ; but they have always consisted of the uneasy class : 
that of gentlemen whose pride of family forbade that they 
should work, and whose wealth went little further than was 
needed for the provision of such weapons of offence as were 
necessary for the plunder of the rich cities of those coun- 
tries : in turn, Ghent and Metz, Turin and Barcelona, Milan, 
Florence and Naples. The consequence has been that they 
have never taken root, and that the limits of France are now 
more contracted than when the process of colonization com- 
menced. Even ancient Gaul itself is still divided into 
several kingdoms, between which there exists the same 
feeling of antipathy that but a little while since was felt by the 
Bourguignon and the Armagnac, the Breton and the Norman, 
the Gascon and the Provencal. War has produced depopu- 
lation and poverty, driving the remaining people to the 
poorer lands to labour by themselves ; whereas peace would 
have produced wealth and population and union: and all Gaul 
would, if permitted, long since have formed one strong and 
independent state, intersected in every direction by roads 
and canals, and requiring neither armies nor fleets for the 
preservation of its independence. The attractive power of 
wealth has never been permitted to exist, even at home ; for 
the colonists who returned gorged wdth the plunder of 



COLONIZATION. 343 

Italian cities, were always eager for the plunder of Italian 
merchants and usurers who might, incautiously, venture 
wuth in their grasp : and when they could not be found, they 
were always prepared to exercise their skill upon their 
fellow countrymen. Wealthy England and Flanders exer- 
cised a strong attractive power and drew largely from 
France, which thus lost her most industrious people ; the 
men w^ho cultivated the richest soils: and there remained 
only those who could not fly, and who, limited to the 
cultivation of the least fertile soils, remained poor, and thus 
has France itself to this day remained poor. 

Poor people cannot emigrate. Voluntary emigration from 
France has therefore never existed. For centuries has she 
prosecuted the work of colonization, but always with ill 
success : for the government has been invariably the leader, 
and the work has been attempted with the sword, and with- 
out the spade. The English colonies in America sought 
w^ealth and not power. They moved on gradually, appro- 
priating land as they needed it for cultivation. France 
allied herself with the savages, and endeavoured to seize on 
the whole country north and west of the Ohio and the Missis- 
sippi. The one prospered and desired peace, while the 
other was poor and restless : and the result was that the 
peaceful man expelled his poor and troublesome neighbour, 
as the only means of preserving peace. The Puritans and 
Quakers remained : ultimately, perhaps, to combine the whole 
continent in one great union, while France has scarcely a 
foot of ground upon it. Thus has the spade triumphed over 
the sword. 

The French ministry were of the Ricardo school of politi- 
cal economists. They thought abundance of land with fine 
timber and flooded by innumerable streams, meant wealth ; 
and they gladly undertook the settlement of Louisiana, sending 
thither the rogues and vagabonds, and prostitutes, of Paris, 
from whose labours large returns were looked for. All the 
world was eager for a division of the profits; the excitement 



344 



COLONIZATION. 



exceeding that which but recently has prevailed in England, 
in the precise ratio which the gambling spirit of poor and 
anti- commercial France, accustomed to set her whole fortunes 
on the hazard of a battle, was greater than that of wealthy 
and trading England. The difference between the two con- 
sisted, however, only in the extent to which the madness was 
carried. 

Everywhere else the result has been the same. The Eng- 
lish colonists of India went partly for the purposes of trade, 
and England had power to maintain trade. Those of France 
went to fight, because the power to maintain trade did not 
exist. France exported chiefly men and arms, and with 
those commodities the market of India was already over- 
stocked. The merchant expelled the soldier. 

She is now colonizing Tahiti and Algeria, as she did Al- 
sace, Lorraine, and Franche Comte : by first converting them 
into deserts. Algeria is said now to be flourishing, and it 
may so continue as long as she shall continue to send annu- 
ally fifteen or twenty thousand men, and some hundreds of 
milhons of money to pay them ; but when those supplies 
shall cease, Algeria will follow the course of all her previous 
colonies. There are now strong inducements to go there. 
The man who stays at home pays those who go, and taxes 
swallow up one-fourth of the whole product of the kingdom. 
If he go himself, he ceases to be a payer and becomes a 
payee. 

Were the colony this day put up to sale, it would not pro- 
duce, in the market of the world a single dollar. France 
has wasted a hundred thousand hves, and many hundred mil- 
lions of money in buying land possessing no intrinsic value 
whatsoever, while holding twelve milHons of acres of her best 
soils still in forest : while her coal and iron are yet almost 
untouched : while her marl and her lime remain where na- 
ture placed them, beneath the poor soils now cultivated for 
want of means to bring into activity the better ones : while 
meadows remain undrained and untouched by the spade or 



COLONIZATION. 345 

the plough : while a large portion of her land is held in com- 
mon : Avhile the product of her agriculture is but five times 
the seed : while importing corn, and coal, and iron : and 
while almost destitute of roads or canals by which the little 
} roduce of her agriculture might reach a market. She wants 
wealth, and she buys more land ! Such was her policy in 
America, and w^e have seen the result. Such will it be in Af- 
rica. The people of France are too poor to found colonies, 
and France is too poor to keep them when founded. If she 
cannot now, after thousands of years of occupation, with the 
advantage of the wealth that has been slowly accumulated, 
cultivate her good soils at home, what hope can there be that 
she will do so abroad .'' There is none. We heard of the 
prosperity of Australian colonies, and we now hear of that of 
Algeria. The one was, and the other is, supported by taxa- 
tion upon the people at home, and the prosperity of the one 
is as factitious as was that of the other. The characteris- 
tics of French colonial policy are restlessness and feebleness. 
That of all successful colonies is quiet energy. 



The colonization of the United States differs from that of the 
two countries we have considered, in the great fact that they 
desire no subjects. The colonists are equal with the people 
of the States from which they sprang, and hence the quiet 
and beautiful action of the system. The poor and widely 
scattered three millions of 1783 : inhabitants of the thirteen 
provinces : have grown to more than twenty millions, inhabit- 
ing thirty states ; of whom every man exercises independent 
action, or is in train soon to do so, even although now deemed 
and held to be a slave. Population has increased with won- 
derful rapidity, but wealth has far outgrown it. The two 
forces — the centripetal and the centrifugal — here balance each 
other perfectly, so far as regards internal action : but external 
action increases greatly the centrifugal force, and thus pre- 
2X 



346 COLONIZx\TION. 

vents, to a vast extent, the growth of wealth, of comfort, 
of civilization, and of happiness. Factories, steam-engines, 
and other articles of wealth attract the labourer towards the 
place on which he stands. Railroads and canals attract him 
towards uncleared land : or half-cleared land. On one hand, 
he sees the little bank : or the manufacturing corporation : 
saving funds, in which he may deposit the surplus of his earn- 
ings until ready to open a store : or buy a little farm : or 
commence manufacturing on his own account. On the other, 
he sees the larger farm, of eighty, one hundred and sixty, 
three hundred and twenty, or even six hundred and forty 
acres, that may require the unceasing labour of his life to 
bring into cultivation : but which will be his own, and an 
inheritance for his children. That is to be his savings' bank. 
In it he deposits all the spare half hours and quarter hours 
that, w^orking for another, would be wasted. He has every 
inducement to economize his time and money, for his farm 
wants, and will pay for, both. He may be an independent 
farmer, if he will : and he does will it. Such would, how- 
ever, more frequently be the case, could he remain at home. 
Throughout all the old states land is held in quantities far 
too large for thorough cultivation, and the result is seen in 
the fact that meadow-lands remain undrained : that men 
still cultivate clay unable to bring it into combination with the 
lime : and that vast bodies of wood still cover the most fertile 
soils ; whereas, were concentration permitted, wealth would 
grow at double pace : land would become more divided : and 
men would obtain from twenty acres highly cultivated, a re- 
ward twice exceeding that which they have from farms in 
the wilderness ten times as large. 

The government facilitates this operation, by purchasing 
the lands from the poor remnants of the original occupants 
now fast passing, and necessarily so, out of existence. It 
pays them well, by granting them annuities far exceeding 
any value their land could have obtained had not the white 
man brought with him the love of labour ; the habit of order 



COLONIZATION. 347 

and economy, and the consequent power of accumulating 
wealth : qualities which they themselves did not possess. 
By their aid the poor Indian is enabled, at every step of 
their progress, to acquire food more readily than before, as 
all may see who will compare the situation of the distant 
tribes with that of the nearer ones. The habits of the savage 
are, however, wasteful. He hates labour, and he loves rum 
and war ; and he cannot avail himself of the advantages that 
are offered to him by civilization. 

The price that is paid appears to be, and is, small, yet it 
is more than they are really worth, and they are resold for less 
than cost : as we have already showm. They are held in 
trust, not for Americans alone but for the world. The man 
of every clime, American or English, Dutchman or Dane, 
Swede or Norw^egian, Frenchman or German, Catholic or 
Episcopalian, Calvinist or Lutheran, Mohammedan or Pagan, 
may claim and receive his share in the trust, on payment of 
a sum that barely indemnifies the community by whom they 
have been acquired, for the cost of purchase, survey, and sale : 
and without including a thousand expenses incident to the 
operation, among which may be included nearly the whole 
cost of the army, as its chief employment has heretofore been 
that of providing for the security of the persons and property 
of settlers on those lands. 

Here we may see and trace the true cause of value in 
land. The millions of acres belonging to the savage are 
valueless. He starves, surrounded by rich meadows, covered 
with the finest timber. The white man approaches, and roads 
are made : and land acquires some value, for which he is paid, 
although he has contributed nothing towards its production. 
It is surveyed, and by this simple act it acquires more value. 
At length it reaches the minimum price, and some of it is 
sold. Further roads and settlements are made, and more 
is sold, and when all shall come to be disposed of, the true 
account of expenditure and receipt will not balance. There 
will remain a large debit to the public lands, although it will 



348 COLONIZATION. 

not appear, much of it being charged to other accounts : and 
most of it having been paid by individuals in the form of 
taxes. If land had any intrinsic value, there would be a 
large profit. As it has none : as it always sells for less than 
cost : there is a loss. 

The first settlement made the wave of colonization rolls 
on, the poorest emigrant taking the lead and preparing with 
his small means a little of the poorer land, and a little 
house, for the better man that is to follow. To him he sells 
his improvements, pushing on ahead to perform again the 
same operation. The settlement grows to be a State, and 
quietly forms for itself a constitution of government, when, of 
right, it takes a place in the Union. From first to last, self- 
government is the rule. The colonist goes w^hen and where 
he pleases, consulting nobody. He and his fellows make 
their own constitution of government, and elect their own go- 
vernors, legislators, members of Congress, and local officers. 

The beautiful effect of the habit of self-government is fully 
shown in the recent settlement of Oregon. The people were 
beyond the limits of any territorial government, and they 
formed a system for themselves ; doing it quietly and perfectly : 
and now we have the annual message of the governor of the 
little State as regularly as that of the President of the Union. 
They have, happily for themselves, no great men among 
them, and therefore all may become great. 

To those familiar with the land system of the United States, 
it is scarcely necessary to speak of its beautiful simplicity : or 
of the care with which it guards, so far as law can do so, the 
rights of the poorer class of settlers, w^ho squat upon lands 
before the time arrives for selling them. In perfect harmony 
with this simplicity is the quiet grandeur of its results : so 
widely different from those of the recent settlements in Aus- 
tralia. The one is natural, the other systematic colonization. 
The one is governed by the practical good sense of men who 
think and act for themselves, while the other is directed by 
men who think that their fellow men are not competent to 



COLONIZATION. 349 

determine what is best for their interests. The one class 
know that men must scatter themselves over the poor lands 
before attempting the rich ones. The other thinks that if 
land were put at " a sufficient price," men might be com- 
pelled to cultivate the rich ones first. The only perfectly 
successful colonization in the world is that of the United 
States : and it is successful because its practice is in direct 
opposition to the theory of Mr. Ricardo and his follow^ers, 
who cannot find in it, from first to last, a single fact in sup- 
port of their doctrines. 

The system is a good one ; but it would be far better were 
it less needed. The same labour that has been expended 
in the colonization of Texas, Oregon, and California, would 
have yielded thrice the results had concentration on the older 
lands been possible. The man who buys a share in lands 
already cleared and cultivated, obtains it at far less than cost : 
while he who goes to the new ones must pay cost, and a 
large cost it is. Were that, how^ever, the only loss, it would 
be cause of less regret than now it is, when we see that the 
acquisition of Texas has involved the country in a w^ar that 
has already cost perhaps fifty millions, and may result in an 
expenditure of hundreds of millions. That war is due to the 
existence of the repulsive force produced hy the misdirection 
of the wealth and labour of England. Had the people of the 
United States been permitted to bring into activity the fertile 
soils of the older States, concentrating their population, and 
placing the consumer by the side of the producer, Texas, 
and Oregon, and California, would have oflfered no induce- 
ment for settlement : labour would have been more produc- 
tive : wealth would now be far greater: and the country w^ould 
be still at peace. The universal thirst for land results from 
the necessity for occupying much land, to be badly cultivated 
by men who remain much poorer than they need be. Were 
concentration now rendered possible, that thirst w^ould disap- 
pear, for men would obtain large returns from smaller surfaces, 
and become rich : and peaceful habits would come with wealth. 

30 



350 COLONIZATION. 

Lastly, we come to the colonization of Africa, undertaken 
with the most benevolent motives, by men who thought they 
saw in that vast and almost unoccupied land, with its 
abundance of the most fertile soils, an outlet for the negroes 
of the south; but who have long since found that the poverty 
of Africa exercised small attractive force when set against 
that of the wealth of the Union. There, as elsewhere, men 
have had to commence with the poor soils, and to enable 
them to do so and prosper, constant contributions have been 
and will continue to be required. The process will, never- 
theless, be continued, and by it civilization will be carried 
into the heart of Africa : and thus will that quarter of the 
globe be made to participate in the benefits resulting from the 
peaceful policy and growing wealth of the United States. 

African colonization has been opposed by many who fail 
to see that when men remain at peace and permit wealth to 
grow, the great laws of nature invariably triumph over the 
weak and pitiful inventions of man. They would have im- 
mediate, unconditional, emancipation, result how it may. 
We propose now to show what has been the course of 
southern colonization, with a view to show how perfectly the 
facts observed have been in accordance with the views sub- 
mitted to the consideration of our readers ; and, as we hope, 
to satisfy them that here as everywhere slavery came with 
poverty, and that freedom comes with growing wealth and 
population : that here, as everywhere, the latter are compan- 
ions of peaceful and quiet action : and that if they would free 
the slave with most advantage to himself, they must act with, 
and not against, the man to whom the laws have guarantied 
the right of property in that slave and in his children. Well 
understood, the interests of all are in perfect harmony with 
each other, and point, as we believe, invariably towards the 
same course of action. 



COLONIZATION. 351 

Raleigh's first settlement in Carolina was that of a man se- 
duced by the idea of speedy wealth to be derived from the 
cultivation of fertile soils. It was made on the Island of 
Roanoke, described as the paradise of the world, for the 
luxuriance of its vegetation, the plumage of its birds, and 
the brilliancy of its skies. The soil was too rich, and his 
people perished. Upon these attempts, he wasted .£40,000, 
for those days a vast sum : and it was a total loss, the result 
being to him even worse than that realized by the founder 
of Pennsylvania. The next colonization of North Carolina 
was voluntary, and, therefore, successful. Settlers came from 
New England, and exercised the right of self-government 
by selecting for themselves ; and they went at once to the 
poor soils on which they could raise corn for subsistence, 
while engaged in the work of clearing richer lands and ex- 
changing the lumber for clothing and other commodities. 
Other settlers followed ; voluntary emigrants from Virginia, 
driven by persecution for difference of religious opinion : and 
they also prospered, because they selected for themselves. 
Prosperity produced union and strength, and when they at 
a subsequent period found themselves oppressed by the pro- 
prietary governor of the state that was to be governed on 
the system devised by Locke and Shaftesbury, they expelled 
him and determined to govern themselves. They had be- 
come colonists by virtue of the exercise of the right of self- 
government : and they were ready to work and to fight to 
maintain that right. They had no great men for leaders, 
and they would not have landlords claiming rent for the use 
of lands whose whole rent-producing powers were due to 
their own exertions. Thus colonized by men who laboured 
for themselves ; thought for themselves ; and acted for them- 
selves ; North Carolina has always been distinguished among 
the Southern States for the simplicity of her institutions : for 
the moderation of her expenditure : and for her attachment 
to freedom. 

Virginia was granted to the noblemen, gentlemen, and 



352 COLONIZATION. 

merchants of London, in whom was vested the whole ma- 
nagement of the colony ; while even the local councillors 
held their appointment from the king, and at his pleasure. 
In him was vested supreme legislative authority, the emi- 
grant being denied the exercise of the right of self-govern- 
ment in any single matter : even in that of worshipping the 
Deity after his own fashion : the Church of England being 
established as the church, and only church, of the colony. 
These noblemen and gentlemen were absentee landlords, 
who wanted rents ; and they sent tenants, instead of creating 
land-owners. As a necessary consequence, the character of 
the emigrants was inferior. They were men who expected 
to reap from fertile soils the same large profits that have so 
recently been looked for, and with such entire confidence, by 
the settlers in Australia ; and they were of the same class : 
poor gentlemen who knew not how to work. Of the first 
expedition, consisting in all of one hundred and five persons, 
but twelve w^re labourers; and the mechanics were very few" 
in number. Their sanguine expectations were disappointed. 
Food could be obtained only as a reward for labour, and they 
were of the class not born to work. The next expedition 
consisted, as before, of <' vagabond gentlemen," to whom 
were now added a few goldsmiths, in search of mines and 
not of the means of acquiring wealth by honest labour. The 
landlords now demanded pay from their poor tenants ; and 
threatened that if the ship returned without a full freight, 
they would leave the colony to perish. In reply to this they 
were informed by Captain Smith, to w^hom it was now no 
secret that men must commence with poor soils, that he 
wanted " carpenters, husbandmen, gardeners, blacksmiths, 
masons, and diggers up of trees' roots :" of whom, as he told 
them, thirty would be more valuable «' than a thousand such 
as we have." Land was abundant, and they could select 
at pleasure from among the fertile soils ; but labour was fol- 
lowed by small returns, because they had to cultivate poor 
soils. New subscriptions became necessary, and now num- 



COLONIZATION. 353 

bers of the nobility and gentry became proprietors ; where- 
upon grants of new powers were obtained from the govern- 
ment, and the landlords became sole masters. A governor 
and captain-general, holding his appointment for life, was 
now sent out ; and was accompanied by stately officers with 
high-sounding titles, and charges with nominal duties, but 
real claims to be paid for the services they might be supposed 
to render. The governor was to possess absolute power : a 
necessary consequence of which was, that the emigrants who 
accompanied him were men who, claiming to exercise no 
rights, respected none: dissolute gallants, impoverished gen- 
tlemen, broken tradesmen, rakes, and libertines : men who 
preferred swords to axes. Idleness and vice, jealousy and 
hatred, abounded. Poverty, too, abounded, and they could 
not pay taxes. In default of other modes of contribution, 
lotteries were instituted, the profits of which went to the sup- 
port of government ; and thus the landlords contributed to 
maintain in them the gambling spirit which had led them to 
the New World. As gentlemen could not work, and food 
could not be obtained without severe labour, the importation 
of labourers under bonds of servitude had been, from the 
first, common ; and the trade in men became, by degrees, 
lucrative : those who had cost £S and .£10, being sold as 
high, sometimes, as j£60. Trade was stimulated by such 
profits ; particularly as the importer obtained from the noble- 
men and gentlemen proprietors a grant of fifty acres of land 
for each person thus introduced : and thus did the aristocracy 
of England establish the slave trade of Virginia.* Slaves 
worked hard, and were hardly treated : the gentlemen owners 
employed themselves in hunting, fishing, cultivating the 
breed of horses, and other similar amusements : and the go- 



* In the seventeenth century, the gentlemen of England gave the land, and 
sold the slave. In the nineteenth, the plan is different. They now sell the 
land, and give the slave. The " systematic colonization" of our time differs 
in scarcely any thing else from that which distinguished the age of Jeffries and 
James II. 

2 Y 30* 



354 COLONIZATION. 

vernors and officers who represented the noble proprietors 
pkindered the colonists, and cheated their employers.* At 
the close of fifteen years, after an expenditure of j£60,000, 
we find the former numbering but six hundred. Neither popu- 
lation nor wealth can grow, although fertile land is abundant. 
Factions arise among the proprietors, discontented with the 
small returns to their investments. Turbulence among the 
settlers is followed by massacre by the savages ; and the 
number of plantations is reduced from eighty down to eight. f 
Next we have '<a petition of grace" to the government of 
England for a monopoly of the right of supplying tobacco : 
and thus the first application for interference with trade, on 
this continent, may, we beheve, be traced to Virginia. The 
colonists who do not work themselves, and cultivate their lands 
by aid of slave labour, cannot compete with other colonists 
who do work. The petition is granted : but the crown now 
determines to have the right of monopolizing the tobacco the 
poor people have to sell, thus converting the grant into a 
means of taxation. The company of noble proprietors is now 
dissolved, the result being, as in all similar cases it has been, 
total loss. I The control of the colony passing to the crown, 
its emancipation is followed by a very brief period of im- 
provement ; but governors are now appointed favourable to 
the claims of those who desire large grants of land, with con- 
cessions of jurisdiction: and thus estates grow large, requiring 
constant increase in the shipments of white slaves from Eng- 
land. Land thus concentrates itself, and man becomes, here 
as everywhere, poor and disunited. Frequent quarrels with 
the Indians are followed by massacres of the whites, and 
population is thus restrained : and without population wealth 
cannot grow. Slaves cultivate poor soils, and masters amuse 



* In this portion of the history, striking resemblances in the two periods may 
be found. 

■f New Zealand, in the present century, is the pendant to Virginia in the 
seventeenth. 

i Here, again, may be found the counterpart of Australia. 



COLONIZATION. 355 

themselves with hunting ; expending on horses much of the 
large proportion of the fruits of the soil which falls to their 
share. The Revolution in England now causes a large addi- 
tion to the population, in the form of cavaliers : " men of 
consideration :" bringing with them the dissolute habits en- 
gendered by civil war : and churchmen, eager to enforce in 
the New World the rights, of the exercise of which they 
had been deprived in the Old. The population is now 
twenty thousand, of whom the blacks constitute less than 
one-fiftieth part: although thirty years have now elapsed 
since the importation of the first African slaves. At the date 
of the Restoration we find landed proprietors possessing two 
thousand acres, and spending their lives in indolence. The 
horse is fully cared for, and the breed is highly improved. 
The " planter's pace" has become proverbial. Man is, 
however, less carefully provided for, because of the constant 
accession of pilgrims to the New World under orders from 
mayors and justices of the west of England, who divide 
among themselves the profits of the trade. Land thus con- 
tinues to grow in power as man declines. The poor soils 
only are yet cultivated, for wealth grows at *'the planter's 
pace," — always a slow one in this regard. Roads are mere 
horse-paths. Bridges are unknown. The only coin known 
in the payment of debts is tobacco. Exchanges are few, 
and towns have scarcely an existence. Schools and printing- 
presses are unknown. 

Step by step we trace the progress of an aristocracy, 
with increasing selfishness and increasing disregard for 
the rights of those by whom they are surrounded ; the 
natural result of colonization by the class to whom labour is 
a sacrifice : and here, as everywhere, this is accompanied 
by increasing incapacity for self-defence, either for the 
maintenance of their own rights, or those of their fellow- 
citizens. Royalist emigrants, elated at the Restoration, 
now become masters. Acts of conformity are passed. 
Salaries and taxes grow larger, while the land is exempt 



356 • COLONIZATION. 

from contributions. Magistrates assess county taxes at their 
pleasure, and landholders form courts that judge without 
appeal. Burgesses pay themselves liberally for their services 
in voting taxes, while limiting the right of suffrage to free- 
holders and housekeepers : and submit to the provisions of 
the navigation act because too poor to own ships by which 
they may evade it as do the people of New England, now 
becoming rich from the cultivation of a sterile soil by the 
hands of freemen. Land grows in power daily, and man, 
great and small, becomes daily weaker. Voluntary immi- 
gration has no existence, because the markets are well sup- 
plied wdth slaves from Bristol and other English ports, and 
freemen could not exist upon the small proportion retained 
by the producer out of the very small returns obtained from 
land constantly cropped : which, too, is cultivated with 
machinery so indifferent that the top soil alone comes into 
action. Much of the wealth of the colony goes therefore 
to " knavish justices," and kidnappers, in England, whereas, 
under a different system, it w^ould make roads and build 
ships : and growing wealth would then exercise a gently 
attractive power over men who could govern themselves, 
and travel at their own cost. Aristocracy grows daily. 
The tendency which prevailed in the earlier days of the 
colony, to a division of property among the members of 
the family, now ceases to exist, and the law of primogeni- 
ture becomes the general rule of action. The land becomes 
still more powerful, and the people become still more 
weak. The death of a slave from excess of punishment 
ceases to be punishable by law, and it is declared lawful to 
w^ound, or even to kill them, in making their escape. Among 
the different portions of society, or among the members of 
the same portion, there exists no tendency to union or har- 
mony ; because, as wealth cannot grow, men are still forced 
to scatter themselves over the poor soils, and concentration 
is therefore impossible. Forests still cover the most fertile 
lands, and swamps capable of yielding vast returns to 



COLONIZATION. 357 

labour are interspersed between the little settlements. The 
very few have fine houses : but log-houses, of one story, in 
which shutters supply the want of glass, are the ordinary 
residences of men who purchase slaves, read no books or 
newspapers, and tolerate no lawyers: while children grow 
up uneducated, because of the total want of schools. What 
then must be the condition of the slave? What could 
be his proportion of the product of his labour? Aris- 
tocracy is here, as elsewhere in all countries and at all 
periods, marked by turbulence and discord. Rebellion, 
civil war, and carnage, coupled with the display of avarice 
and rapacity in a high degree, fill up several years of the 
colonial history, during all of which we observe a steady 
influx of English slaves : sometimes young persons kid- 
napped and hurried on board of ship ; and at others, persons 
charged with small crimes, who prefer being sold by the 
magistrates and judges rather than risk confinement in such 
horrid prisons as those which existed in the days when land 
was absolute and the people weak.* The arrival of a nohle 
governor is distinguished by the doubling of the salary of 
his office, as necessary to the maintenance of his dignity : 
and by the relinquishment on the part of the aristocratic 
assembly of all control over taxation, at a time when from 
the extreme impoverishment and restless state of the people, 
economy was more than ever necessary. Failing to respect 
the rights of those beneath them, they are unable to guard 
their own, and thus oppression and weakness are seen 
going hand in hand together. Rebellions and executions 
follow in the train of tyranny and rapacity. His successor, 
another of the noble race, fruges consumere nati, dis- 
tinguished, even beyond his successor for rapacity and 
for meanness, divides perquisites with his clerks. The re- 
bellion of Monmouth now adds largely to the population of 

* The whole system has its counterpart in Australia, but the latter pre- 
sents one feature of barbarism unknown to the seventeenth century, to wit, 
Norfolk. Island, the disgrace of the age. 



358 COLONIZATION. 

the colony. The prisoners made on that occasion, and who 
escape the hangman, are distributed among the queen and 
courtiers, by whom they are sold at ten or fifteen pounds 
each : to be resold in Virginia for forty or fifty pounds. 
Among them are numerous persons of family and education. 
To this date, the importation of negro slaves has been ex- 
ceedingly limited, white slaves being found cheaper and 
better. The tobacco ships have brought them as return cargo, 
whereas the negro would require a voyage to the coast of 
Africa, to which no cargo could be carried : and, therefore, 
so long as the exportation from England can be main- 
tained, the other branch of the slave trade can attain but 
little development. With the close of the reign of James II. 
that traffic falls oflf, even if it be not entirely discontinued ; 
and thereafter the supply comes chiefly from the African 
coast. Such is the history of the origin of American slavery. 



In 1663, Lords Clarendon, Albemarle, and other noble- 
men, obtained a grant of the country now included in the 
two Carolinas, with absolute authority, and with the expecta- 
tion of obtaining large rents from the rich land included 
within their domain. With the usual rapacity of their class 
we find them obtaining, two years later, further grants of the 
land now included in all the States south and west, and ex- 
tending far into Mexico. The new and great State now lo 
be formed required a constitution that should accord in mag- 
nificence with its extent, and to Locke and Shaftesbury are 
we indebted for that which was then prepared, the only one 
formed for any portion of the British dominions in America, 
by the aristocracy exclusively, and therefore the only one in 
which is avowed the intention of keeping the people in a 
state of slavery. To the extent of two-fifths the land was 
to be inalienable, the property of barons, caciques, pala- 
tines, &c.,with tenants, adscripts of the soil, subject to the 



COLONIZATION. 359 

jurisdiction of lords from whose decision there was no 
appeal. The leet men were to be leet men through all gene- 
rations. A grand council of fifty, of whom fourteen only, 
holding their seats for life, represented the commons, was 
mixed up in the scheme with courts of heraldry ; of cere- 
monies and pedigrees ; and of fashions and sports : and 
this absurd scheme it was fully believed would endure for 
ever. Land was to be all, and man nothing. 

The first settlement was formed on rich soils whose fatal 
atmosphere had destroyed the native inhabitants ; and the 
whites naturall}^ followed them. The second, Charleston, 
was placed near the junction of two rivers, where the vege- 
tation was luxuriant. The settlers, in keeping with the 
magnificence of the proprietors, were generally men of noble 
family impoverished in the civil wars : men who could not 
work, and who needed others to do the labour. The climate 
was pestilential and white labourers would not come, even 
for full wages. Labourers were, therefore, to be purchased ; 
and in a short time the slaves were twice as numerous as the 
whites. In no part of the Union have the settlers been to 
the same extent men of high birth and wealthy family con- 
nections as in this state ; and in none has there existed, at 
all times, so strong a tendency towards cultivating rich soils 
in advance of their natural order: and in none, consequent- 
ly, has there been so great a disparity of condition between 
the planter and the labourer; the condition of the negro 
being worse than in any other portion of the Union : the 
highest aristocracy being here, as everywhere, surrounded by 
the poorest democracy. The natural consequence is, that 
population diminishes and land is almost valueless. Aris- 
tocracy and disunion, poverty and concentration of land, 
are ever found in close companionship with each other. 

The cause of the existence of slavery in the United States 
is now, we think, obvious. Lupoverished branches or de- 
pendents of the English aristocracy sought wealth without 
labour. Unwilling to work themselves, and unable to offer 



360 COLONIZATION. 

inducements to the free labourer, who could have land else- 
where for himself, they first enslaved their poorer country- 
men ; and when that source of supply was stopped, they took 
the negro. Had no aristocracy existed in England, no 
negro slavery could have arisen in America. The reader 
who may chance to be familiar with the books of the recent 
settlers in Australia, can hardly fail to see in the sketch of 
Virginian history now furnished very many points of resem- 
blance : all of which are due to the fact that in both the settlers 
were unused to labour, and therefore unfit for the business 
of settlement. Everywhere in those books there is a com- 
plaint of the high price of labour. The land is good enough, 
but labour is too dear to work it, and it will not pay. If 
the labour market could but be over-stocked, so that the 
land-owners could make their own terms, the latter would be 
rich. They wanted slaves, although not fully aware of the 
fact. The man who cannot work and who undertakes the 
work of settlement, must have slaves, or he must starve : and 
the reason is, that all rent is consideration paid for the use 
of those advantages which result from labour expended on 
land, and not for land itself. *Until labour has been so 
applied, entitling its owner to a share, it has no value ; and 
he who will work it must have the product, be it what it may, 
much or little : but it is always little, and with less he could 
not live. He must commence with the poorer lands that he 
can cultivate, while waiting the clearing of the woods and 
draining of the marshes which cover the rich soils. His wages, 
therefore, absorb the whole. Virginia and South Carolina 
were settled by those who consumed without producing, and 
hence the existence of the curse of negro slavery, which made 
no way at the north, because the food, and clothing, and 
lodging, of the slave were more than his labour was worth. 
He would there have been, as now he would be, an incum- 
brance on the earth. 

* « After an enormous expenditure of capital, the returns were far less than 
might have been derived from a similar amount in England, and property was 
steadily depreciating in value." — Henderson^s New South Wales. 



COLONIZATION. 361 

The number of blacks, slave and free, existing in the 
United States at the first census, was 757,000, of whom 
60,000 were free, leaving 697,000 slaves. How many had 
been imported, it is impossible now to say ; but we doubt if 
the total amount of importation had exceeded 250,000. It was 
probably short of that number. The slave trade continued 
to be permitted by law until 1808, a period of eighteen 
years, during which time the number imported could not 
have exceeded 100,000, as the whole increase from 1790 to 
1810 was only 620,000 ; and according to the rate of natu- 
ral increase since that time, it would have been 520,000. 
We think, therefore, that we are safe in saying that the whole 
negro race in the Union, amounting now to about 3,250,000, 
are descended from 350,000 barbarians, whose condition as 
slaves was far better than it had been when nominally free, 
and liable at every hour to be robbed or murdered, or 
both. 

At the period of the first census, the country had, in a 
considerable degree, recovered from the effects of the war 
of independence. Since that time, it has advanced steadily 
in population and wealth, but with vastly more rapid pace in 
the northern than in the southern portions ; because in the 
one every man labours for himself, and every one accumu- 
lates something as a contribution to the general stock of 
wealth. The difference in the relative advance causes the 
southern portion to appear almost stationary ; but such is far 
from having been the case. Population and wealth have both 
advanced greatly, and there has been a vast increase in the 
productive power, accompanied with a corresponding in- 
crease in the proportion of the labourer ; who is now far better 
fed, clothed, lodged, and taught, than at any former period. 
With this increase of wealth the planter has acquired the 
ability to seek more fertile soils, and we observe him, accom- 
panied by the black race whose services he employs, regularly 
descending the slope from the mountains of Virginia and Ken- 
tucky towards the better lands in the vicinity of the Gulf 
2Z 31 



362 COLONIZATION. 

of Mexico ; and with every step in their progress, the value 
of labour rises. The labourer himself acquires more value in 
the eyes of his master, who feeds and clothes him better : 
gives him better shelter ; better medical attendance ; more 
privileges in regard to land for his own use and that of his 
family ; and thus enables him more and more to exercise the 
right of self-government. With every step in this progress 
he acquires more value in his own estimation, without which 
he could make no progress in the work of preparing him- 
self for the ultimate perfect exercise of that right.. To enable 
the reader to trace this operation, we give the table on the 
opposite page, in which the several States occupying the 
same latitudes are placed together. 

The process that is thus exhibited as now going on before 
our eyes, is frequently stigmatized as an internal slave trade, 
and legislative action is not unfrequently invoked for its pre- 
vention ; when it is the precise course that has, in every 
quarter of the world, led man to freedom. As the people 
of Italy became more rich, they sought the rich soils at the 
foot of their hills, and became more free. War drove them 
back to the hills, and they became slaves. As the people 
of England now become more rich, they seek the fertile soils, 
and become more and more free wdth every stage of the pro- 
cess. So is it with the people of Prussia. So was it with 
the people of Egypt, of Argos, and of Attica, and so has it 
been with every nation of the world. To shut up the negro 
race in Virginia and Kentucky would be their ruin. The 
Almighty never intended them to mix with the white race, 
nor is it desirable that they should do so ; for as a separate 
and independent race of free men, they will be happier, bet- 
ter, and more useful, than in any other condition. They are 
now gradually concentrating on the soils best suited to them, 
and wdth results similar to those everywhere else observed. 
Farms and houses, towns and cities, roads and railroads : 
steamboats and electric telegraphs, cotton factories, furnaces, 
and other evidences of increasing power of accumulation, 



COLONIZATION. 



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364 COLONIZATION. 

resulting from increased productiveness of labour, are seen 
to rise with a rapidity totally unknown in the older slave 
States, where the poor soils are still cultivated : where roads 
improve but slowly, and railroads are scarcely known. In 
the new States, the tendency to concentration — to placing 
the consumer side by side with the producer — exists in a 
strong degree, whereas, in the older ones it has scarcely an 
existence. The latter are yet in the transition state. The 
slave race is going out, and the free race is coming in : and 
until the change shall be effected, they cannot move wdth 
much rapidity. The time is now not far distant when the 
whole race wdll be concentrated in the southerntier of States. 
Including South Carolina, more than one-half were there in 
1840. At the next census, the proportion will probably be 
three-fifths, if not more ; and at the end of another decen- 
nial period, it will probably exceed four-fifths : and as popu- 
lation and wealth shall increase, as better soils shall be cul- 
tivated, and as the consumer shall, more and more, take his 
place by the side of the producer, their labour will become 
steadily more productive. With the increase of production 
they will obtain the control, for their own use, of a largei 
proportion of the proceeds of their labour : and that propor- 
tion will steadily increase until there will be seen to arise a 
class of free black men, cultivating for their own use their 
ow^n land, bought from their old masters, who will find in 
the price of the land a compensation for the price of the 
labourer. Ultimately, and at no distant period, those States 
will be owned and inhabited by a race of free citizens, dif- 
fering in colour but similar in rights, and equal in capacity 
to their fellow- citizens of the north. 

To those who doubt this, and there will be many, we have 
to say that the laws of nature are the same in the New World 
as in the old : in the present age and all past ages : for the 
black man and the white : and that if this result do not arrive, 
it will be in opposition to all past experience. Man always 
has become more free as he has passed from the cultivation 



COLONIZATION. 365 

of poor soils to rich ones, and he always will. He cannot do 
this unless population and wealth increase. The interest 
of the planter favours the increase of population, and popula- 
tion cannot increase where morals do not improve. His 
interest favours increase of wealth, because improved ma- 
chinery enables him to grow more cotton or corn : improved 
gins enable him to prepare his cotton better and with less 
labour: while steamboats and railroads facilitate his connec- 
tion with the great markets. With another step, he will 
make his market at home, converting his cotton into cloth 
by aid of the food grown on his own rich lands, now uncul- 
tivated : and with every diminution in the quantity of the 
machinery of exchange, wealth will still more rapidly in- 
crease. The planter desires the growth of wealth and popula- 
tion ; and they bear on their wings division of land, and free- 
dom, and happiness, and prosperity,to man. The interests of 
all are in perfect harmony with each other, and the day is 
not far distant when all will admit the fact. At present, the 
majority of planters deny to the minority the right of judging 
for themselves in the matter of educating slaves, of emanci- 
pating them, &c. ; but we need desire no better evidence of 
the tendency to education and emancipation than the fact of 
the existence of such laws. Without it, they would not be 
needed. Even as it is, the education law is almost a nul- 
lity, and, ere long, the minority will become the majority : 
and when that shall be the case, the whole class of planters 
will be restored to the exercise of rights in regard to their 
property of which they are thus deprived, because, as it is 
said, the public good requires it. Leagues for the pubHc 
good always abound where aristocracies exist ; but selfish- 
ness is their characteristic, wherever found. The war-cry 
varies, but the object is still the same. Sometimes they 
fight for the liberties of Europe, while, at others, it is for the 
plunder of Italy, of India, or of Holland. Such combinations 
always exist where land is concentrated, and man divided ; 
and they most exist where land is most concentrated, and 

31* 



366 COLONIZATION. 

man cultivates the poorest soils, as may, at this moment, be 
seen on both sides of the Atlantic. The history of France 
shows us several such leagues, the members of which, in 
every case, had in view the private good alone : and all were 
willing to be bought at their own prices. We do not allege 
this of the people of the south. We have no doubt that 
many, very many, seriously believe that in maintaining such 
laws they are doing what is best for all, black and white : 
but they might reflect that their fellow-planter, who educates 
his slave, has the same right to judge for himself as they : 
and so he will, and does, and ought : law or no law. Wealth 
will grow, and freedom will come, let the laws be as they may : 
provided they remain at peace and diminish the cost of their 
machinery of exchange. Let them do this, and black senators 
will ultimately sit in the Congress of the United States : and 
the Union will then be sounder, and stronger, and richer, and 
more rapidly advancing in wealth and population, than at any 
previous period. 

It is supposed by many that it is necessary to pass laws 
to prevent the extension of slavery over new territories : but 
we are disposed to believe that a very brief examination of 
the facts of the case will show that such a measure is an 
unnecessary interference with the rights of those who are 
equal with themselves. Great natural laws tend now daily 
to produce the results desired, and evasion of those laws is 
impossible ; whereas no law could be made that would 
exist, or that should exist, did the interests of those subject 
to it require its repeal. 

If we examine attentively the movements of the population 
of the Southern States, we shall see existing on the part of 
the planter, a universal tendency downwards towards the 
richer lands : while, on the part of the free labourer, or the 
man whose means are limited to the ownership of one or 
two negroes, there is a tendency, equally universal, towards 
the higher lands: and thus we see the free population, the far- 
mers, of Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia and Tennessee, 



COLONIZATION. 



367 



clustering together in the neighbourhood of the mountains, 
while the country intermediate between them and the ocean 
is in a great degree occupied by planters : and hence it is 
that we see an unceasing contest between the eastern and 
western portions of Virginia for political supremacy. The free 
man always seeks the heads of the streams : the dry and poor 
lands : for the commencement of his labours, because his means 
are small, and he is satisfied if he obtain wages for his time and 
labour : and his profits are to be found in the value that he 
gives his land.* The planter is a capitalist, who wants pro- 
fits of capital, or rent ; and as land cannot be made to yield 
more in return to the labour of the people who work for him 
than it would do to that of the man who worked for himself, 
it follows that if the product is to be divided into two parts ; 
one for the labourer, and the other for the labourer's owner ; 
the latter must be a deduction from the former, and the la- 
bourer must receive less than the ordinary rate of wages. In 





* TVestern North Carolina. 




Slaves, Total Pop. 


Ashe 


479 - - - - 7,467 


Cherokee - 


- 199- - - - 3,427 


Haywood 


303 - - - - 4,975 


Henderson - 


- 466 - - - - 5,129 


Lincoln 


2,711 . - - - 25,660 


Burke 


. 3,159 ... - 15,799 




Western, Virginia. 




Slaves. Total Pop 


Brooke - 


54 - - - - 7,948 


Marshall 


- 46 - - - - 6,937 


Ohio 


231 ... - 13,367 


liBwis 


- 123 - - - - 3,151 


Nicholas - 


74 - - - - 2,223 


Greenbrier - 


- 1,314 .... 8,695 




Eastern Tennessee. 




Slaves. Total Pop 


Marion 


380 - - - - 6,070 


Monroe 


- 312 ... 12,056 


Jefferson - 


672 .... 12,076 


Greene 


- 509 ... 16,076 


Blount 


383 - - - - 11,745 


Ganger 


- 105 ... 10,552 



/ 



368 COLONIZATION. 

order that the product may be sufficiently large to bear this 
division, the planter is forced to seek those soils and those 
climates in which the powers of his labourers can be em- 
ployed to the greatest advantage ; and as the negro originated 
in the torrid region of Africa, it is natural to suppose that it 
is in a climate corresponding thereto that his powers will be 
most fully developed : whereas those of the white require a 
higher and colder one, and he is thus seen to become less 
active as he passes south. Each is excellent in his place. 
The negro will do more work than the white man in Flori- 
da, but the Yankee will do more than two neorroes in Mas- 
sachusetts. The negro can produce more rice than the 
white in the low lands of Carolina ; but the white, who lives 
in the mountainous region of that state, will produce more 
corn or wheat than his slave. The slave in Maryland and 
Virginia is competing with the free labourer of Ohio, in the 
production of wheat and tobacco ; and the latter is beating 
the former out of market, and thereby producing a necessity 
for his emigration towards the climate for which nature in- 
tended him : and there he wull go, and there he will stay, 
let man make what laws he may. 

By law, slavery exists in Missouri, but what is its pro- 
gress ? In 1830, the slaves were twenty-five thousand, and 
the free people one hundred and eighteen thousand. In 1840, 
the former were fifty-eight, and the latter three hundred and 
twenty-four thousand. The natural increase would give 
thirty-two thousand. It follows that twenty- six thousand 
have been taken there : and if we examine where they have 
gone, we find it is to the counties nearest the Mississippi, 
where they have been temporarily arrested on their way to 
the south. If w^e look to Arkansas, we obtain the following 
results. The population in 1830 was : slave, five thousand, 
free twenty-six thousand. In 1840, slave twenty thousand, 
free seventy- seven thousand. Its numbers increase slowly, 
because wealth grows slowly, and the free labourer is not at- 
tracted there : while the planter finds no attraction sufficient to 



COLONIZATION. 369 

induce him to ascend the Red River, when he has before him 
the lower lands of Alabama and Mississippi, where wealth 
is growing rapidly and attracting forcibly. So strongly is 
this felt in Arkansas, that lands forfeited for non-payment of 
taxes are at this moment offered gratuitously to settlers, for 
freemen w^ill not go where slavery exists, and planters can- 
not ascend rivers to cultivate poor lands. That state must, 
therefore, soon cease to tolerate slavery within its limits. 
The planter always^zes from mountains and hills, and heads of 
streams, while the free labourer there commences his operations 
and works downwards. The mass of the planter is great. 
He represents fifty, one hundred, or five hundred persons, 
who are property : and wealth is always strongly attracted 
by wealth. The railroad now building across the whole of 
the southern tier of states, constitutes an attractive powder that 
is irresistible, and it is there that the black race tends : there 
that it will stay. Arkansas and Missouri will soon become 
free states, by virtue of a great general law : the law of self- 
government. Texas, too, will be a free state. Of the slaves 
who have been taken there, many have, we understand, al- 
ready returned : the wild lands of that state, destitute of roads, 
having proved less attractive than the towns and cities, and 
steamboats and railroads, of Mississippi and Alabama. The 
heavily moving planter does not go to the rich lands, but the 
light and active Yankee, and the hard working German, are 
going to the poorer ones of the elevated region in which a 
cool climate and pure air enable them to work, and gradu- 
ally to prepare the means for subduing the fertile land at 
their feet. In a short time, the proportion of free to slave 
population will be, as now in Missouri, so large that the 
planter will deem it unsafe to venture there, even were it his 
interest ; and that it will not be until railroads, and towns, 
and cities shall become sufficiently numerous to exert a power 
of attraction greater than Alabama and Mississippi*: and 
that time is very distant. The start those states have taken 
is so great that they will probably have attracted within their 
3 A 



370 COLONIZATION. 

limits the chief part of the negro population before Texas 
will exercise any attractive influence whatsoever. 

If the views thus submitted be true, and they are in strict 
accordance with the facts which the last ten, twenty and 
thirty years have presented for examination, there can be no 
necessity for the passage of laws having for their object inter- 
ference with the planter's rights of property. He will not go 
to the high lands of California, for he will not go to those of 
Arkansas or Texas. He will not go to the low lands of Texas, 
where no population exists : and still less will he, should 
Mexico ever unite her fortunes with those of the United 
States, seek the low lands of that country, where labourers 
may be hired for a less quantity of the necessaries and com- 
forts of life than he is accustomed to give to the slave whom he 
has purchased. Were Mexico this day within the Union no 
planter would cross the Rio Grande, but tens of thousands 
of Yankees would be found there, giving life and activity to 
agriculture, and to commerce : stimulating the labourer, by 
increased rewards, to increased production; opening new 
markets for the manufactures, whether of iron or of cotton, 
of the north, and for the cotton and sugar of the south : for 
fertile as are the lower lands of Mexico, a long time has yet 
to elapse before they can be rendered extensively productive. 
The chmate is bad, because vegetation is too luxuriant : and 
the work of drainage and clearing, essential to improvement 
of climate, is a very slow one. 

Carefully considered, we believe it will be seen that be- 
tween the two great divisions of the Union there is a perfect 
harmony of interests, and that all that is needed for the settle- 
ment of the great slavery question, is the observance of the 
most perfect respect for the rights of property : every man of 
the free states doing to his neighbour of the south as, were 
their positions changed, he would that his neighbour should 
do unto him. In so doing, he will do that which will most 
promote the growth of harmony and peace, union, wealth 
and population, and without them there can be no im- 



COLONIZATION. 371 

provement in the physical, moral, intellectual or political 
condition of the objects of his solicitude. << Love one an- 
other," is the great law of Christianity, and there is no rea- 
son why the planter and the farmer should do otherwise. 
The former asks only of the latter respect for his rights in 
property acquired in accordance with law, and he has a right 
to ask for them perfect respect, but while doing so he should 
recollect that the whole system of southern legislation is 
marked by interference by one portion of the planting inte- 
rest with the rights of another portion, their neighbours. 
The man who desires to educate, or to emancipate, his slave 
is as much entitled to the exercise of his judgment in regard 
to the management of his property as is his neighbour who 
is resolved to do neither the one nor the other. He should 
also recollect that the system of separating husbands and 
wives, parents and children, is not in accordance with the 
great moral law which teaches that men should do by others as 
they would that others should do by them, and that persistence 
in the practice offends the moral sense of those who are most 
desirous to see enforced most fully the system of non-inter- 
ference. The more perfectly he respects the rights of his 
neighbours, and those of the people whom he claims to hold 
as property, the more fully will he be able to maintain and 
to defend his own. Such has been the case throughout the 
world, and the more he shall study its history the better will he 
be satisfied that obedience to the precepts of Christianity is not 
more the duty than it is the policy both of men and of nations. 



We may now examine the course of events in the British 
West Indies, the scene of a recent great interference with 
the rights of property. We have seen the effects of absentee 
ownership in Virginia, but in the West Indies it was far 
worse, because much longer continued : and because to the 
exhaustion thus jiroduced was added that resulting from 
frequent wars, occasional invasions, and unceasing restric- 



372 COLONIZATION. 

tions on the one hand, and monopolies on the other. The 
absentees wanted large rents from land on which little capi- 
tal had been invested. The land would not support the 
negro, the agent, and the owner, but the wants of the two 
latter were imperative, and the negro had to suffer to the 
extent required. To do this, he must begin by working 
the rich land : the land of fevers and pestilence. He must 
begin by sugar land, instead of corn or potato land. The 
forfeit was his life, which was given to make up the rent 
required. Population could not grow, under such circum- 
stances, and it did not grow. By the census of 1824, there 
were seven hundred and seventy-five thousand of the negro 
race in those colonies. In 1834, they were reduced to 
seven hundred thousand, showing a reduction of ten per 
cent. 

We have seen that in all other countries the fertile lands 
were abandoned as population decreased, and such must 
have been the case here. The value of slaves fell, neces- 
sarily, from the same cause : and thus to the tyranny 
that prevented all increase, and caused the number emanci- 
pated to be far less than the number that had been im- 
ported, was due the power of the government to effect eman- 
cipation. Had they received the same treatment as the 
slaves of the United States, there would have been no Ma- 
roon wars to waste the population w^hich would have been 
eight times as great and sixteen times as valuable: and then 
forced emancipation would have been as impossible as impo- 
litic, and as impolitic as unjust. The majority of the people 
of England compelled a small minority to do that which if 
right to be done at all should have been done by all : but the 
measure that was to cost perhaps ^£100,000,000, was held to be 
fully paid for with ^£20, 000,000. The difference has been since 
made up in the cost of sugar, which doubled in price, and 
the labourer of England was thus deprived of a necessary of 
life. In this way, the landlords of the colonies and the 
labourers at home have paid the cost of a violent interfer- 



COLONIZATION. 373 

ence with rights acquired under sanction of the law, and 
guarantied by the law.* 

The labourer is now free, and the landlord receives 
no rent. The former prefers raising yarns to sugar. He 
can raise them on the high lands to which frep labour 
always directs itself, and he can put the whole in his own 
pocket, as wages. The absentee planter's agent cannot pay 
the same wages, if he would live and enable his principal 
to live. The consequence is, an universal cry for labourers, 
who would be abundant enough at sufficient wages. Cheaper 
labour is deemed necessary, and a new slave trade is organ- 
ized. Hill-coolies are imported from India, and distributed 
to do hard work at low wages, and to be t/-eated little better, 
if the accounts we have seen be true, than the slaves of old : 
although still living better than under the Company's govern- 
ment. The whole framework of society in some of the colo- 
nies seems to be broken up. la others, owing to peculiar cir- 
cumstances, it is said to have worked better, but what is the 
actual state of things in any of them it is exceedingly diffi- 
cult to say, for all who attempt to describe the workings of 
the measure are either its determined advocates or its deadly 
enemies : and the one can see in it no WTong, the other no 
right. One thing has been proved by it, and that is, that rents 
cannot come from land upon which labour and capital have 
not been, and are not continued to be, expended. The mere 
land can pay nothing but wages, and the labourer must 
become the owner, unless the owner live on it and improve 
it and thus entitle himself to receive interest in the form of 
rent. Were he even to attempt this, it is doubtful if he would 
succeed ; for in all other countries the poor lands have been 
first cultivated, and the rich lands last : and it would appear 
that the natural order of things is about to be restored. 

* Weakness and tyranny always go hand in hand. The planter of the 
West Indies destroyed his slave, and had no power to protect himself. The 
planter of the United States causes his slaves to increase, and therefore it 
is that he has now llie power to protect himself in the enjoyment of his rights 
of property. 

32 



374 COLONIZATION. 

The British islands furnished, of sugar, in 1836 3,600,000 cwts. 

1839 2,800,000 

1840-41, average, 2,180,000 

1842-3-4, 2,500,000 

1845 2,800,000 

1846 2,100,000 

The deficiency in sugar is not made up in coffee, the aver- 
ao'e amount of which, from the British possessions, was, in 
1835-6, above twenty-five millions, whereas the average for 
1844-5 and 6, but little exceeded twenty-one millions. 

The deficiency in the supply of sugar and coffee culti- 
vated for export, has been attributed to an increasing dispo- 
sition to raise food for consumption at home, but the Barba- 
dian oi July last, says, << There is no food in the country, 
starvation is staring us in the face. What a change has 
come over Barbadoes ! The little island which used to feed 
more than a hundred and twenty thousand people, and yet 
export corn, yams and potatoes to the sister colonies, is 
without supply, and the labouring inhabitants now crowd 
into Bridgetown to buy American meal, rice, &c., to keep 
themselves from starving ; and so great is the advance on 
those necessaries of life, that a quarter of a dollar goes 
very little way indeed. We may judge of the dreadful 
scarcity of corn and potatoes, by the fact that the town is 
m.ost abundantly supplied with poultry and butchers' meat, 
which the cultivators of small tenements are selling off as 
fast as they can, at a very low price, because they have not 
the means of feeding their stock." 

We have watched this experiment with great interest, but 
have found it exceedingly difficult to understand the working 
of it ; so far as we have been enabled to form a judgment, 
it appears to be a total failure. Had it succeeded, it would 
have been wonderful. By the above statement, it appears 
that Barbadoes had once a population of a hundred and 
twenty thousand. In 1834^ it was a hundred and three 
thousand. We should be glad to know what it is now. If 
population grow, all will come right. But if it diminish as it 



COLONIZATION. 375 

has heretofore done, the land must relapse Into barbarism, and 
such we have some apprehensions will be the case. 



The Spanish colonists commenced with the low^er soils — 
those which in the natural order of things are the last. 
They w-anted gold and silver, which would not pay wages, 
and therefore the people were enslaved. The results were 
more disastrous than the working of the sugar lands of the 
West Indies, for nearly the whole population was destroyed. 
No land can be made to yield more than w^ages, except 
w^here labour has been expended upon it, or for its advan- 
tage : and then its selling price is always less than the cost. 
The crown of Spain expended no capital but it took a large 
rent, paid by the sacrifice of millions of lives. 

In one case, however, a different system was pursued, and 
the results contrast so strongly with those afforded by an 
examination of the British islands, that w^e cannot omit to 
notice it. The island of Porto Rico had been for three cen- 
turies neglected. It was too rich. In 1802 it had a population 
of 163,000, scattered over the island, on those parts that would 
afford food for consumption : and received an annual remittance 
from Mexico for the support of the government. About thirty 
years since, Spain invited settlers : offering land, free of 
expense even for the title papers, and perfect security as 
regards the control of the property they might bring with 
them : with freedom to leave when they pleased, and light 
taxes to pay, if they stayed. The result was that population 
and wealth increased wdth great rapidity. The former con- 
sisted, in 1830, of 162,000 whites, 127,000 free blacks, 
and 34,000 slaves, making a total of 323,000, or almost 
double what it had been before. Immense forests had dis- 
appeared before the axe. Marshes had been drained. Roads 
had been made, and villages and towns had grown up, and 
cities had increased. The number of proprietors was then 



376 COLONIZATION. 

20,000, holding 1,500,000 acres, giving an average of 75 
acres to each. The character of the land selected may be 
seen from the fact that of 85,000 acres under cultivation, 
there were but 11,000 under sugar cane, and 11,000 under 
rice, while the remaining 63,000 were employed in growing 
food for home consumption, except 9000 in coffee trees, 
which grow on the higher lands. The remaining 1,400,000 
acres owned by individuals, were nearly equally divided 
between meadow and woodlands, waiting until the means 
of the colonists should enable them to clear and drain 
them : and affording, in the mean time, food for 200,000 
horned cattle, 80,000 horses, and above 170,000 sheep, 
goats and swine. Here we have a beautiful illustration of 
the advantage of self-government. Had not the crown 
offered perfect freedom of entry and departure, and equal 
freedom as to the selection and mode of occupation of the 
lands, such results could never have been obtained. 



With the growth of population and of wealth man ac- 
quires increased power to determine for himself what soils 
he will cultivate ; and he takes the near or the distant, the 
superficial or the profound, as he deems the one or the other 
best fitted to enable him to improve his condition. With 
each step in the progress of the power of man over land, 
wealth tends to increase with greater rapidity, and with each 
such step he is enabled to bring into activity better soils 
with less labour. With each he becomes more and more a 
being of power ^ and less a victim of necessity. 

The PAST says to the freeman of the present : «« If you 
desire that all men should be as free as yourself, respect the 
rights of your neighbour, and unite with him in exertion for 
the promotion of the growth of wealth : for freedom always 
follows w^ealth." 

To the planter, it says : " Labour for the maintenance 



COLONIZATION. 377 

of peace, and for the promotion of the growth of wealth. 
Your property will increase in value, and your lands will 
become divided. Your slaves will become the free culti- 
vators of those lands, and your rents will then be far greater 
than they are now.^' 

To all it says : «' Avoid war, and preparation for war !" 



3B 



378 IRELAND. 



CHAPTER Xir. 



IRELAND. 



In what we have thus far written, we have purposely 
omitted all reference to Ireland, — desiring to treat it by it- 
self, and to show, as we think conclusively, that there is no 
exception to the law that we have submitted for the conside- 
ration of our readers. 

At the invasion, Ireland was advancing in civilization. It 
was divided into five little kingdoms, among whom existed 
those difficulties which in all cases have been seen to exist 
where men were poor and scattered, because of the neces- 
sity for depending on the least productive soils for a supply 
of food ; but, had they been left to themselves, population 
and wealth w^ould have grown, the better soils would have 
been brought into cultivation, and Ireland would now occupy 
the position in the world to which her advantages so emi- 
nently entitle her : among the foremost in civilization. To 
her insular position, England has been indebted for her free- 
dom from invasion, and for the growth of wealth and the 
habit of peace. Ireland enjoyed the same advantage as re- 
garded the Continent, but she was unhappy in being the 
near neighbour of the Norman aristocracy, a body whose 
most distinguishing feature has at all times been unbounded 
rapacity. Ireland was partially subjugated ; and thencefor- 
ward the power and wealth of England became an element 
of perpetual disturbance. The land was filled by English 
agents, who were anxious for confiscations : and confisca- 
tions were to be produced by rebellions. Rebellions were, 
therefore, to be produced, and the mode of production was 



IRELAND. 379 

oppression. Such is the history of Ireland, the prey of Eng- 
land. 

The natural result of this state of things, during the first 
five centuries, was the entire insecurity of person and pro- 
perty. Population and wealth did not advance, if they did 
not even retrograde. The people still cultivated the poor 
soils, and remained in a state of barbarism. The oppressions 
of the Stuarts gave rise to disturbances, which resulted in the 
expulsion, under James I., of the whole people of Ulster, who 
had their choice of ' Hell, or Connaught ;' and that province, 
to the extent of nearly three millions of acres, became the 
property of the city of London, and other absentee landlords. 
Ireland afterwards supported the Stuarts, and was repaid for 
her services by the confiscation ofnearly eight millions of acres. 
Ireland, nevertheless, supported James II., and was punished 
by his daughter and her husband, by the confiscation of an- 
other million. Thus the seventeenth century witnessed the 
transfer to the aristocracy of England and their friends, of 
nearly the whole land of Ireland that was fit for cultivation : 
the whole quantity being twenty millions, of which one-third 
is still waste. 

A conduit was thus provided for all the produce of this 
unfortunate island, over and above what was absolutely ne- 
cessary to keep the miserable people from starvation. Some 
portion of the new owners planted themselves in Ireland : 
little sovereigns among their hapless dependants : and, as is 
always the case under such circumstances, there was a per- 
petual contest among the great men for the division of the 
spoil ; and faction was carried to an extent to be exceeded 
only in the history of France. The poverty of the people 
rendered them turbulent, and armies and taxes w^ere ren- 
dered more necessary. The people paid the taxes, and 
their masters filled the offices, and squandered on luxuries 
in Dublin, what was collected at the point of the bayonet 
from people who ate potatoes in mud cabins, and went 
clothed in rags. Every thing tended towards centralizing the 



380 IRELAND. 

wealth of the kingdom in the capital, on its waj^ outward ; the 
necessary consequence of which was that the people still cul- 
tivated the poor soils, and concentration was impossible. 

More effectually to prevent it, however, every practicable 
measure was resorted to, for the purpose of preventing the 
consumer taking his place by the side of the producer. Irish 
manufactures were prohibited in England; while Ireland was 
exposed, almost unguarded, to the influence of a system 
which, by forcing the capital of England from employment 
on the land, rendered it superabundant and unnaturally 
cheap, and compelled it to seek manufactures and com- 
merce.* Ireland was then prohibited from all direct inter- 
course with foreign countries, or even the British colonies ; 
and was thus deprived of the power of exchanging the pro- 
ductions of its fields for sugar or coffee, except through 
English ports. We see thus, that while the mass of the 
products of the country was withdrawn never again to re- 
turn, that portion which was to be exchanged was burdened 
with the cost of a vast amount of useless and wasteful ma- 
chinery, tending still further to arrest the progress of wealth 
and the power of concentration. 

That no measure of repression might be omitted, the peo- 
ple who chanced to entertain on the subject of transubstantia- 
tion ideas differing from those of the governing few, were 
deprived of almost all the rights of person and property. 
They could rise neither in the bar nor in the church: neither 
in the local corporation nor in the state. f England had pro- 

* King William, in one of his speeches to Parliament, declared that he 
would " do every thing in his power to discourage the woollen manufacture 
of Ireland." 

•j- The chief disabilities imposed upon the Catholics during the reign of 
William and Anne, were the following. They could not hold leases for more 
than thirty-one years ; could neither purchase lands, teach publicly in schools, 
have a horse of more than £5 value, vote for members of Parliament, nor 
become barristers, or clerks, or attorneys, without taking the oath of allegiance 
and supremacy ; hold any office under the crown, or become magistrates in 
any town, without taking the sacrament, as prescribed by the English test 
act, according to the usage of the Church of England ; nor take property 



IRELAND. 381 

vided outlets for the property that might otherwise be accu- 
mulated in Ireland; and by this measure she provided simi- 
lar outlets for all the men of mind, who desired to rise, and 
felt that they could rise, if permitted. Such men sought 
employment in France or Spain, or on the continent of 
America. The natural consequence of this was, that the 
control of public affairs fell into the hands of the most 
rapacious and contemptible band of jobbers, noble and 
plebeian, that has been exhibited in the annals of the 
world. 

With the Union came perfect freedom of intercourse, and 
with it came diminished power of concentration. The 
wealth of Ireland tended now more than ever to England. 
Dublin lost all its attractions. Power, and place, and pen- 
sion, were to be sought in London ; and there went the land- 
lords of Ireland. The feeble barriers that had been opposed 
to the perpetual error of English policy now disappeared, 
and the manufacturers of Ireland were ruined. The copy- 
right law w^as extended to Ireland, and her printing-offices 
were closed. From that day to the present, the unfortunate 
country has been deprived of all power of concentration : of 
all power to place the consumer by the side of the producer. 
She is compelled to convert her food into pork, that it may 
bear transportation to the place where it is to be exchanged 
for cloth : when, otherwise, she would bring the fashioner 
of the wool to the place where corn and wool were both pro- 
duced, and would thus obtain twice the cloth for the same 
quantity. Could she do this, the gain would be quadruple. 
She would save the use of a vast amount of bad, and would 
acquire the use of much of the best, machinery of exchange. 
The profit derived from this w^ould enable her to bring into 



from a Protestant by descent, bequest, or devise. Upon death, their inherit- 
ances were equally divided among their children ; and all regular clergy, friars, 
Jesuits, and Catholic bishops, were enjoined to quit the kingdom. Catholics 
were in still more general terms deprived of the elective franchise, by an act 
passed in 1727. 



382 IRELAND. 

activity her best soils ; and the return to labour would be 
doubled : while the value of the product, in cloth, would 
also be doubled. 

Ireland, thus deprived of all intercourse with the colonies 
and with the world, might be supposed to be exempt from 
the cost of supporting the fleets and armies necessary for re- 
taining those colonies, and fighting the battles of the world : 
but such is not the case. Of what escapes the landlords, 
the landlord government of England takes four millions, for 
the maintenance of armies and fleets for keeping Ireland 
quiet ; and for the pay of English viceroys, English chan- 
cellors, English secretaries, and English agents of all kinds : 
whose savings are deposited in English funds, or invested in 
the stock of English railways. Of what is accumulated 
in Ireland by people who are there resident, the mass goes 
to England, because all employment for capital in Ireland is 
interdicted. From 1821 to 1833, the amount of Irish accu- 
mulations transmitted across the Channel for investment in 
the British funds, exceeded ten millions of pounds : and if 
we could ascertain the investments in corporation stocks, it 
is possible they might amount to almost as much more. 
Even the savings of the little capitalist who deposits his 
shilling in the savings fund, cannot escape absorption. By 
law, those institutions are compelled to make their invest- 
ments in the English funds ; and thirteen years since, the 
amount so invested was a million and a half of pounds. 
Centralization is perfect ; and hence the poverty and wretch- 
edness of the whole people. 

Having thus shown the numerous conduits provided for 
the transfer of the wealth of Ireland to England, we may 
now look to some of the machinery of exchange. That 
wealth tends to promote the extension of the manufactures 
of England, the demand for agricultural products, and the 
demand for labour at certain seasons of the year in agricul- 
ture. The labourer of Ireland, deprived of the power of 
exchanging his products at home with those who will give 



IRELAND. 383 

him cloth, finds that he must confine himself to the cultiva- 
tion of that commodity of which the land will afford him the 
greatest quantity, and that will least bear the expense of 
transportation : the potato. He has, consequently, labour 
to sell ; and as he has rent to pay, he must sell it, or be ex- 
pelled from his little holding. He travels to Cork or Dub- 
lin and makes his way to England, there to employ, in 
obtaining a pound or two, the labour which might, if em- 
ployed at home, have given to him and his employer twice 
as many pounds as he had received shillings. Such is the 
machinery of exchange provided for Ireland. Under such 
a system, concentration cannot take place, and without that 
civilization is impossible. 

Such are the causes why the whole population of that 
beautiful island is dependent upon the single chance of a 
good crop of potatoes : why they starve if it fail : and why 
they must continue to starve so long as they continue to 
constitute a portion of the British empire, subject to laws 
w^hose sole end is to draw from the land all that it can be 
made to give forth, and to return nothing back to the great 
giver.* 

A system better calculated to perpetuate barbarism 
never was devised ; yet English writers gravely ask if the 
existence of the present state of things is not due to some 
defect of the Irish character ! Had England been made the 
prey of her continental neighbour, in like manner, such 
would be now the question of the people of France. In 
point of physical qualities, the people of Ireland are supe- 
rior to most of those of the continent, and eminently so to 
those of France : the reason for which may be found in 
the perpetual exhaustion of the people of the latter by the 

* Mr. Cashlan waited on Sir William Somnierville, the Irish Secretary, with 
the tidings that in his parish there are sixteen hundred who have neither food 
nor work. In these quarters, it would seem, nothing will teach the land- 
lords; for he says, Lord Dillon, with a rental of £22,000 per annum, spent 
in England, has fifteen thousand acres uncultivated there — and not a shilling 
spent for eighteen months on drainage or reclamation. — Irish paper, 1847 



384 IRELAND. 

drains for purposes of war. Governments are always par- 
ticular to take the able-bodied, and those exempt from dis- 
ease. The demands of that portion of the community of 
France that administered the government : that is, which 
collected taxes, and made wars for their own gratification 
or emolument : have at times required all that were capable 
of bearing arms ; and even now require, in parts of the 
kingdom, almost every man that is suited for their purpose. 
Of the whole mass of conscripts, nearly forty per cent, are 
rejected for being under the standard, which is four feet ten 
inches, French, or less than five feet two inches, English mea- 
sure. In the Departement du JYord, out of five thousand four 
hundred and thirty-three conscripts, that proportion is first 
dropped for that reason. Then follow those who have con- 
stitutional defects, and finally about twenty-eight per cent, 
are rejected for disease and deformity ; and thus the number 
left is barely sufficient to supply the annual demand. Such 
has been the case for centuries, and the effect is here the 
same that would be found on the farm of a man who sold all 
his best calves to the butcher, and kept the inferior ones for 
the purpose of propagation. The best men perish in the 
field, and the blind, the halt, the lame, the stunted, and the 
miserable, are left at home to labour, and to recruit the 
population. Poverty prevents marriage, and libertinism is 
common. Marriages are few, by comparison with those of 
Ireland. The subjects are bad, and marriages are conse- 
quently unprolific. Women cannot marry, because the pro- 
portions of the sexes are disturbed, and hence a cause of 
unchastity. In Ireland the proportions are better main- 
tained, and nearly all marry, as it was intended they should 
do. Women are therefore chaste, and all have children : 
but of these many die for want of proper nourishment. 
Population grows, and therewith w^ealth advances : and the 
condition of the people slowly improves. 

The growth of population is slow, because the slow 
growth of wealth perpetually forces the younger and more 



IRELAND. 385 

active portions of the people to seek abroad that subsistence 
Avhich is denied to them at home. The statements in regard 
to their numbers during the last century deserve no atten- 
tion, because of their obvious incorrectness. In 1805, the 
population was believed to be 5,395,000. In 1841, it was 
8,175,000: at which rate, allowing for emigration, it would 
double itself in about sixty years. 

Hundreds of thousands of Irish men and women have 
transferred themselves to the United States, and we have 
abundant opportunity of knowing their character. Some- 
times turbulent, the natural consequence of the situation in 
which they have been placed, the men are, in general, hard- 
working, industrious, and economical, and make excellent 
citizens : while the women are unquestionably distinguished 
for chastity. All have been educated in a bad school, but 
all show what they might have been made, had the school 
been better. 

It is from the frequency of agrarian outrages, that the 
English writers are disposed to infer the incapacity of the 
Irish for civilization, yet it is from their occurrence that we 
should most infer their capacity for it. The system is bad : it 
destroys the souls and bodies of the men who are subject to 
it: and the outrages complained of are but the natural result 
of its existence, while they are evidence that man has not 
yet been so ground down by slavery as to have lost all con- 
sciousness of the existence of a right to resist. The mise- 
rable Hindoo when oppressed by his tyrant governor takes 
his seat before his door, with his wife and children, and 
threatens to starve himself and them to death if his griev- 
ances be not remedied. For centuries the poor peasant of 
France, tailleable et corveeahle a merci et a jjiisericorde, dis- 
appears from the page of history. To raise the Hindoo to 
civilization, it would be necessary to teach him that he had 
rights, and to do so would require far greater time than 
w^ould be required for the Irishman, who, poor and oppressed 
3 C 33 



386 IRELAND. 

as he may be, has yet preserved the knowledge that they 
once existed. 

The task of the daughters of Danaiis was that of filling a 
vessel pierced with holes. Could they have stopped the holes, 
it would speedily have filled. The task of the people of 
Ireland is the same, and until they apply that remedy, the 
effort is hopeless. The mode of remedy is to be found in 
self-government, and in that alone. Were she alone, she 
w^ouid need neither fleets nor armies, for she has not an 
enemy in the world. Everywhere regarded as the victim 
of the policy of England, her sufferings have excited uni- 
versal commiseration, and all would desire to aid, rather 
than to interfere with her. Without fleets or armies, she 
would require scarcely any taxes. She owes no debt, for 
that of England was contracted by and for England alone. 
She it was that wanted colonies, and commerce, and glory, in 
which Ireland was not permitted to participate, and for 
which Ireland ought not to pay. One leak would thus be 
closed. 

With the diminution of the repulsive power of taxation, 
the attractive power would increase, and absentee landlords, 
no longer claimants on the Enghsh government, and no 
longer driven to France for escape from taxes, would find 
a residence at home most profitable : while every man, from 
the highest to the lowest, would find himself animated by 
the desire to prove that Ireland ivas capable of self-govern- 
ment. Peace and harmony w^ould take the place of riot and 
outrage, and wealth would grow, in the form of roads and 
mills : the better soils capable of yielding coal and iron, 
and larger supplies of food, would come into activity, and 
concentration would appear: a consequence of the power 
of the consumer to take his place by the side of the pro- 
ducer. The English manufacturer would find that he could 
work to more advantage in Connaught, where food was 
abundant and labour cheap, than in Manchester, where the 
former was less abundant and the latter dearer: and by 



IRF.L^ND. 387 

degrees factories wouKl make ihclr appearance in every part 
of Ireland. With every such improvement in the machinery 
of exchange, the power of production would increase : in- 
dustry w^ould be stimulated : wages would rise : the million 
of mud-built cabins would be replaced by neat cottages : 
the value of land would rise : land would be divided and 
would pass gradually into the ownership of those who culti- 
vated it: and happiness and prosperity would take the place 
of the existing scene of misery and wretchedness : and all 
this would be accomplished without interfering in the slight- 
est degree with one right of property. The man of Ireland 
wants only to feel that he has a home : that it is his own : 
to make it one in which he would desire to spend his days, 
instead of braving all the horrors of the middle passage in 
search of a place of refuge in the wdlds of Canada, to perish 
on the voyage, or to die of disease on the shores of the St. 
Lawrence. 

The character of the present system is so monstrous that 
it can be paralleled in India alone. There, as in Ireland, 
the landholder takes all and gives nothing back to the land. 
There, as in Ireland, the people perish of famine and pesti- 
lence : and both must so continue to perish while their 
existing relations with England continue to be maintained. 
India, unhappily, has no newspapers. Ireland has but few, 
yet we may judge from the few facts that are published, of 
the vast multitude that are not. The latest journals are 
filled with accounts of the eviction of tenants, whose houses 
and cabins are thrown down ; their unfortunate inhabitants 
being compelled to seek refuge in neighbouring glens, or 
church-yards, there to die of famine or pestilence :^ and all 



* Sir Edward Waller has ejected eight families, consisting of about forty- 
seven persons. These most wretched beings have, since the period of their 
eviction, been squatting in dykes and glens, literally burrowing in the earth for 
shelter, victims to every inclemency of the weather, death hourly staring them in 
the face. At Farnee, Maryglen, and Moyrath, in the neighbourhood of Keeper 
Mountain, liord Bloomfield, who is in St. Petersburgh, through his agent, has 
been at the same work of ejectment. About eight families, consisting of 



388 IRELAND. 

this is the consequence of the pertinacious determination of 
England that Ireland shall send her wool to England, accom- 
panied by food for the man that is to twist and weave it: the 
w^hole then to be carried back in the form of cloth, which 
the poor wretch who raised the food cannot buy, because he 
has not even potatoes for his family. 

The present course of legislation is the most extraordinary 
that the world has yet seen, and proves the uniform tendency 
of injustice to produce injustice. The produce of Ireland 
is transferred to England, there to be employed or consumed, 
and the impoverished Irishman seeks to follow it. To 
compel those who are not yet paupers to support those who 
are, the Parliament of England passes a poor law, by virtue 
of which nearly the whole land is confiscated. In one 
county of the west, the present expenditure under that law 
exceeds four millions of dollars, while the annual value of 
all the property subject to the rate is but three millions and 
a half, and much of this is subject to the claims of mort- 
gagees: but the right of owners, and mortgagees, and all, are 
extinguished. Over an extent of nearly six millions of 
acres, the expenditure is at the rate of seventeen millions a 
year, while the annual value is but twelve millions : and 
these seventeen millions are to be employed in supporting 

about forty -five persons, have been also sent abroad, without a roof to protect 
them from the rigours of the weather. Their condition is immeasurably more 
lamentable than we can describe. 

On the 13th of July, according to the statement, and in the village called 
" Glen," on the estate of the Earl of Cork, ejectments were executed by the 
sub-sherifF of Cork, aided by the military and police force, on forty-eight 
tenants. Their houses or cabins were thrown down, and the forty-eight 
families, numbering about four hundred human beings, were turned out upon 
the high road. Of these it is alleged that more than one hundred icere suffer- 
ing from fever. They were obliged to take refuge in a neighbouring church- 
yard. The church-yard of Ballysaliy contains many flat tombstones and 
grass-covered graves ; and among those graves the ejected families slept for 
four consecutive nights, huddled together. One poor woman was taken off 
her bed four days after her confinement, and placed by the side of the ditch 
with her infant, both in a state of helpless exhaustion. Another woman had 
a family of seven, all suffering from fever. In a third family there were ten 
persons in fever at the time of the ejectment. 



IRELAND. 389 

people who are idle at home because they cannot find em- 
ployment, with a view to prevent them from following to 
England the corn and the pork that they are not permitted to 
retain at home. The State is now making loans to promote 
drainage, and it has lately expended some millions in mak- 
ing roads, also called loans, not a shilling of which can — or 
ought — ever be repaid. It passes laws to facilitate the sale 
of encumbered estates, while its system tends to withdraw 
from the country, to be invested in England, all the means 
of purchase. It has even been proposed that the State 
should, under certain circumstances, take possession of 
lands and administer them in some manner or other. We 
now forget the process that was to be pursued, but we know 
that it was most remarkable for its folly and its injustice. 
Each step is thus worse than the la.st, and each but renders 
the case of Ireland more hopeless, and the connection with 
England more intolerable. Under such circumstances it is 
not extraordinary that the people of the former should be be- 
coming daily more and more unanimous in favour of a repeal 
of the Union, and of a recognition of the right to govern her- 
self after her own fashion. 

The present forced connection is ^ curse to both countries, 
and the sooner it shall be dissolved, the better it will be for 
both. Free and independent, Ireland will be to England the 
best of friends, while subjugated Ireland must continue to 
be, as she always has been, the bitterest of enemies. Allied 
in feehng, but independent in government, they will be ever 
ready to combine for self-defence, and wars of offence will 
pass out of fashion. Peace will promote the growth of 
wealth in both, and England will find in Ireland a better 
customer than she has ever yet been, without the cost of 
governing her. The blackest chapter in history is that which 
contains the recital of Ireland's connection with England, 
and so long as that country shall continue in her present 
condition she will stand a living monument of injustice : a 
great pauper, soliciting alms at home and abroad, and made 



390 IRELAND. 

such by English farmers-general. So long as she shall thus 
stand, the claims of England to occupy a high place in the 
history of civihzation may well be disputed. She has 
sown poverty and disunion, and she is now reaping the 
harvest. 

She has compelled the people to cultivate poor soils, while 
surrounded by millions of acres that require drainage alone 
to render them as productive as any lands in the world : to 
content themselves with turf while coal abounded: to buy 
iron when both ore and fuel existed in unlimited quantity : 
to buy cloth while wasting more labour than would have 
manufactured all the cloth consumed in Britain : and all this 
she has done for the benefit of her own landlords, her own 
manufacturers, and her own shipping merchants. Her policy 
towards Ireland has been one of unmixed and unmitigated 
selfishness, injustice and tyranny : and she has thus esta- 
blished in the sister island, containing eight millions of inha- 
bitants possessing the same rights as their masters her own 
more favoured people, a realm over the portals of which are 
inscribed 

" Who enters here, leaves Hope behind :' 

yet, in defiance of all this, England claims to occupy a high 
place among civilized nations !* 

The PAST says to the Irish landlord of the present : " If 
you desire that your land increase in value and that your 
rents increase in amount: strive for the freedom of Ireland." 

To the labourer it says : " If you desire good wages, 
plenty of food, and a home of your own: and for your 



* "It is a strange thing that it should not be admitted in England, that one 
nation has no right to govern anolher nation, and that such government can 
know no other law than that of force, acco7npanied by robbery and tyranny ; 
that the tyranny of a people is of all tyrannies the most intolerable, and 
that which leaves the least resource to the oppressed, because a despot is 
arrested by a regard to his own interest, he is restrained by remorse, or by 
public opinion, but a multitude calculates nothing — it has no remorse— it 
decrees to itself glory, when it deserves to feel only shame." — Turgot. 



IRELAND. 391 

children, land of their own : strive for the freedom of Ire- 
land." 

To all it says : " In union there is strength. Be united 
and you shall be free. Become free, and you will become 
prosperous and happy." 



NOTE. 

As this sheet is going to press, we meet wifh a statement of the emigra- 
tion of the present year to the St. Lawrence, by which it appears that out of 
99,000, no less than 13,000 died on ship-board, or of disease contracted on 
the voyage. Of the unhappy remainder, a large portion will probably perish 
from having been forced abroad to a new and poor country in which exists but 
small demand for labour, while themselves totally unprovided with the means 
of purchasing food for themselves and their families. So monstrous a system 
has never existed in the annals of the world, yet British ships, maintained out 
of the taxes paid by starving Irishmen, are, at this moment, employe*''' i» the 
suppression of the slave trade ! 



392 INDIA. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

INDIA. 

The man who cultivates the poor soils, surrounded by 
fertile lands covered with fine timber that he cannot clear, 
is a wanderer, and most frequently a robber. The poor 
tribe clustered on the side of the great mountain range, looks 
with longing eyes upon the wealth of more active and 
industrious men whose labours have subdued to cultivation 
the richer soils, and have thus enabled milHons to obtain 
abundant food from a surface that but recently gave to a few 
thousands scarcely the means of supporting life. Envy and 
jealousy prompt to war and plunder, and hence perpetual 
interference with the rights of more industrious and richer men. 

If we desire to find the seats of early civilization, we must 
seek them in the lower lands near the foot of the Himalaya 
range : in India and China : on the shores of the Tigris and 
the Euphrates : in Asia Minor and in Greece : and, some- 
what more distant, on the banks of the Nile. If, now, we 
trace the history of those countries, we find a constant series 
of invasions from the higher and poorer lands: one race of 
barbarians succeeding another until at length civilization 
disappears from all, and a few scattered people, half savage, 
are seen obtaining from the cultivation of poor soils a mise- 
rable subsistence, where formerly vast nations obtained from 
the richer soils abundant rewards to labour. 

If next we look further westward, we see civilization risinjr 
in Italy and Sicily : in Carthage and in Spain : again to 
disappear under the invasions of poor men, heretofore culti- 
vating poor soils. Again it is found fiirther west, for a time 
to disappear under the weight of invasion from the east, 



INDIA. 



393 



again to rise, secured by insular position from further inter- 
ferences from abroad. Standing now in England, and 
looking upwards towards the Alps, we may see civilization 
gradually diminishing as our eyes ascend the slope ; and 
with each step upwards, we see the traces of earlier cultiva- 
tion. Extending our view towards the great range of Asia, 
we see, on a large scale, the same great fact ; and with each 
step downward in the scale of civilization, we find ourselves 
approaching nearer the site of early cultivation : nearer to 
the places occupied by men whose labours were unaided 
by wealth in the form of spades and axes. 

Turning our eyes now towards India, we may see a fur- 
ther illustration of the fact that distance from the seat of early 
occupation has been essential to permanent civilization. 
The history of that great country during a long series of 
centuries, is a record of perpetual invasions from the poor 
tribes occupying the high and dry lands on the sides of the 
great mountain range. At each intermission civilization 
struggles into life, but each is followed by a new incursion, 
when population is destroyed, the rich lands are again aban- 
doned, and poverty and wretchedness, feebleness and inca- 
pacity for self-defence, become again the sole heritage of 
man. If we now look to the character of man, we may see 
it change nearly in the ratio that security is increased by 
distance from these mountain ranges. The Hindoo, ag- 
grieved by his government, sits dhurnah. He will starve 
himself, his wife and children, and thus destroy his master's 
slaves. The Turkish rayah is found one step higher in the 
scale, which rises gradually until we reach that country of 
Europe in which security has most existed, and in which 
wealth and population have most increased — England. On 
a smaller scale, we may see the same fact illustrated as we 
descend the Alps, the character of man steadily improving 
as we pass towards the lands of the richer soils : Guienne 
and Normandy : the Netherlands and Prussia : the Milanese 
and Tuscany ; and always highest where wealth most exists, 
3D 



394 INDIA. 

for there it is that man is most enabled to apply his labour to 
the fashioning of the great machine. 

At one period in its history, Hindostan appears to have 
enjoyed a high degree of prosperity. Each village consti- 
tuted a little republic, having its own officers for the mainte- 
nance of the public peace, and for other purposes. The 
contributions to the state are supposed to have been one- 
thirteenth of the produce of the land. The best soils were 
then to a great extent cultivated. Wealth increased, educa- 
tion was generally disseminated, and continued peace and 
security were alone required for the attainment of the highest 
civilization. Unhappily, how^ever, for them, they were too near 
neighbours of poor men w^ho cultivated thin soils, and who 
saw in labour with the sw^ord returns far larger than could be 
obtained by labour with the plough. Invasion and destruc- 
tion of property and life were followed by civil wars and 
depopulation. The fertile soils were gradually abandoned, 
and labour yielded less returns. Taxes became less and 
less productive ; and each step downwards in production 
was followed, necessarily, by a corresponding one upwards in 
the proportion of the great landlord : the collector of rent or 
tax : until at length the half of the diminished product was 
held to be his right. Cultivation diminished as with the 
growth of poverty the inducements to honest labour disap- 
peared, and each diminution in the number of those who 
lived by their own labour was attended by an increase in the 
number of those who lived by that of others. The rights of 
the little land-owner passed away and land gradually concen- 
trated itself in the hands of the few^ and they did as has 
been done at all times, and in all ages, by men who exer- 
cised power over their fellow men. They plundered those 
below, and were in turn plundered by those above them- 
selves. The havildar, the head of a village, called his habi- 
tation the durbar, and plundered of their meal and roots the 
wretches within his jurisdiction ; the zemindar fleeced him 
of the small pittance which his penurious tyranny had 



r INDIA. 395 

scraped together ; the phoosdar, a military commandant of 
the province, seized on the zemindar's collections, and bribed 
the nabob's connivance in his villanies by a share of the 
spoil ; the covetous eye of the nabob ranged over his domi- 
nions for prey, and employed the plunder of his subjects in 
bribing or resisting his superiors.* Great men became very 
numerous, and, as usual, the poverty of the little men in- 
creased with every addition to their number. 

Such was the condition of that country forty years since. 
During a large portion of the previous century it had been 
the theatre of wars whose object was the determination of 
the question whether England or France should have the 
right of taxing its unhappy people ; and during the whole 
period the former was filled with nabobs : men who had 
accumulated fortunes by a display of rapacity rarely ex- 
ceeded ; who plundered sovereigns, princes, and princesses, 
with a full knowledge that what was taken from them must 
be furnished by contributions from the poor starving wretches 
by whom they were surrounded. 

Since then, the whole tendency has been that of centrali- 
zation. Late in the last century Lord Cornwallis had endea- 
voured to set some bounds to the Company's claim for taxes, 
but even that effort was accompanied by acts of grievous in- 
justice. The whole class of little village proprietors was first 
delivered over to the tender mercies of the zemindar, or great 
landed proprietor, the result of which is that they have been 
in a great measure, if not altogether, extinguished. Land 
thus concentrated itself in the hands of the few, but respect 
for their rights had as little existence as respect for those of 
the unfortunate people below them. Everywhere, zemindary 
estates were abandoned becauseof inability to pay the taxes, 
and in some cases to the extent of a fifth of the whole num- 
ber. Of the condition of the unfortunate ryot, or labourer, 
subjected to their control, some idea maybe formed from the 

* Sec Ormc on the Government of Hindostan. 



296 INDIA. 

following passage taken from the fifth report of the select 
committee of the House of Commons, by which it is seen 
that the system of indirect taxation united all that is inju- 
rious in the French octroi, and the Spanish alcahala. 

" In addition to the assessment on the lands, or the shares 
of their produce received from the inhabitants, they were 
subject to the duties levied on the inJand trade, which were 
collected by the renters under the zemindars. These duties, 
which went by the name of sayer, as they extended to grain, 
cattle, salt, and all the other necessaries of life, passing 
through the country, and were collected by corrupt, partial, 
and extortionate agents, produced the worst effects on the 
state of society, by not only checking the progress of 
industry, oppressing the manufacturer, and causing him to 
debase his manufacture, but also by clogging the beneficial 
operations of commerce in general, and abridging the com- 
forts of the people at large. This latter description of im- 
posts was originally considered as a branch of revenue too 
much exposed to abuses to be intrusted to persons not liable 
to restraint and punishment. It was therefore retained under 
the immediate management of the government. The first 
rates were easy, and the custom-houses few ; but in the 
general relaxation of authority, this mode of raising revenue 
for the support of the government was scandalously abused. 
In the course of a little time, new duties were introduced, 
under the pretence of charitable and religious donations, as 
fees to the chokeydars, or account-keepers' guards, and 
other officers at the stations, as protection money to a ze- 
mindar ; or as a present to those who farmed the duties. 
Not only had the duties been from time to time raised in 
their amount, and multiplied in their number, at the discre- 
tion of the zemindars and the renters under them, but they 
were at length levied at almost every stage, and on every 
successive transfer of property ; uniformity in the principles 
of collection was completely wanting ; a diflferent mode of 
taxation prevailing in every district in respect to all the 



INDIA. 397 

varieties of goods, and other articles subject to impost. 
This consuming system of oppression had, in some instances, 
been aggravated by the company's government, which, when 
possessed of a few factories, with a small extent of territory 
around them, adopted the measure of placing chokies, or 
custom stations, in the vicinity of each, for the purpose of 
ascertaining the state of trade within their own limits, as 
well as to afford them a source of revenue. Under the 
head of sayer revenue was also included a variety of taxes, 
indefinite in their amount, and vexatious in their nature, 
called moturpha ; they consisted of imposts upon houses, 
on the implements of agriculture, on looms, on merchants, 
on artificers, and other professions and castes." 

The Company, however, could not afford to part with its 
right to levy taxes to an unlimited extent, under the pre- 
tence of taking rent for the use of poor lands occupied by 
men who cultivated the poorest soils: and the further pro- 
gress of the permanent settlement was therefore stopped after 
it had been established throughout Bengal, and over a small 
portion of the Madras presidency. Throughout the remainder 
of the Madras, and the whole of the Bombay presiden- 
cies, the ryotw^ar system still exists, under which the amount 
levied on each ryot is left to be determined at the discretion 
of the European or native revenue officers, it being the 
practice to compel the ryot to occupy as much land, and 
consequently pay as much taxes, as is deemed proportioned 
to his circumstances. He is not allowed, on payment even 
of the high survey assessment fixed on each field, to culti- 
vate only those fields to which he gives the preference ; his 
task is assigned to him, and he is constrained to occupy all 
such fields as are allotted to him by the revenue officers ; 
and whether he cultivates them or not, he is saddled with the 
rent of all. If driven by these oppressions to fly, and seek 
a subsistence elsewhere, he is followed wherever he goes 
and oppressed at discretion, or deprived of the advaijtages 
he might expect from a change of residence. 

34 



398 INDIA. 

With every improvement in cultivation ; with every im- 
provement in manufactures ; with every increase in the 
quantity of labour; with every indication of increased com- 
fort or wealth ; the taxes rise, or would rise : and as a 
necessary consequence, the poor ryot feels little inducement 
to exertion. Little as it might be, however, it is lessened 
when he comes to exchange his productions for the necessa- 
ries of life that he cannot produce. At every step in his 
progress to market he finds a new tax, and when at market, 
he buys his salt mixed with dirt from the Company's agent, 
at six times the price at which it- should be sold : and thus, 
of the little that escapes the collector of rents, a large por- 
tion goes to the collector of taxes.* Under such circum- 
stances, it is not extraordinary that the poor ryots should say 
that " their skins only are left them." 

The whole product of that country, over and above what 
is necessary for the absolute preservation of life in ordinary 
seasons — for in extraordinary ones the people perish by hun- 
dreds of thousands by famine and pestilence — centralizes 
itself in Calcutta, to go thence forth in the payment of vice- 
roys, and officers without number, charged with managing the 
affairs of these poor people : that is to say, with the collection 
of taxes, and with their expenditure for the payment of armies 
occupied in subduing the people of Burmah, or Scinde, or 
Afghanistan, or those of the Punjaub; and with the transmis- 
sion of that large portion which goes to England, to be divided 
among the owners of East India stock : dividends to men who 
live in palaces and ride in coaches, out of the proceeds of taxes 
on salt paid by a poor wretch whose wages are two rupees, or 
one dollar, per month, out of which he finds himself! Ab- 
sentee-landlordism exists in Ireland, but it luxuriates in 
India. Every thing is taken from the land that can be 

* " The government, in purchasing salt, are in the habit of pressing it down 
with hands and feet in the wooden measure ; but when they sell it, of filling 
it up as light as can be, which makes a difference of twenty per cent.; 
and other differences of measurement make an additional twenty per cent." — 
Letter of Commissioner Grceme to the Board of Revenue, 



INDIA. 399 

scratched out, and nothing goes back. Even the zemindar, 
sometimes enriched by the oppression of the poor ryot, never 
applies a rupee to the improvement of land subject to the 
Company's claims for revenue. 

Thus far, however, we have seen but a small portion of 
the holes in this vast vessel of the Dana'ides. Forty years 
since, the people of India supplied the world with cotton 
manufactured goods. Their machinery was rough, it is true, 
but it could readily have been improved ; and it would have 
cost far less to carry to Calcutta a few ship-loads of ma- 
chinery, for the conversion of Hindoo cotton into clothing for 
Hindoo men and women, by aid of Hindoo labourers eat- 
ing Hindoo rice ; than to carry tens of thousands of ship- 
loads of cotton and rice to Manchester, to be returned in the 
form of cloth to Calcutta : thence to be carried into the inte- 
rior, in a country totally destitute of roads and bridges. 
Such, however, was not the policy of England. She would 
not cultivate her own fertile soils. She would not permit 
capital to seek employment in fashioning her own great food- 
producing machine : and she would eat the rice of India, 
even although she might exclude the corn of Canada. She 
would not permit the machinery of manufacture to go to In- 
dia, or elsewhere ; and she would insist on supplying India 
with cotton goods. She did take some food in exchange ; 
but, to prevent improvement in that country, she subjected 
cleaned rice to a heavy duty, from which paddy, or rough 
rice, was exempted : thus offering a bounty to her people 
for using an unnecessary quantity of bad machinery of ex- 
change : a measure that could have been exceeded in folly 
and rapacity only by a similar bounty on the import of cot- 
ton in the rough, with a view to secure the profit of gin- 
ning it. 

England had grown rich. For more than half a century 
the wealth of India had been transferred to her coffers by 
aid of Clives, and Hastingses, and numerous other members 
of the same family : men of the great race : and thus while the 



400 INDIA. 

one became enriched, the other became poorer from day to 
day. Towns and villages, by thousands, had been aban- 
doned during endless wars; and extensive districts, embrac- 
ing the most fertile lands, had relapsed into jungle : and 
tigers now occupied the ground that before had given 
food and clothing to hundreds of thousands of poor but in- 
dustrious people : the consequence of which was, that the 
poorest soils were cultivated with the worst machinery. 

The stock of a ryot consisted of a plough not capable of 
cutting deep furrows, and only intended to scratch the sur- 
face of the soil, with two or three pairs of half-starved oxen. 
This, a sickle used for a scythe, and a small spade or hoe 
for weeding, constituted almost his only implements for hus- 
bandry. Fagots of loose sticks, bound together, served for 
a harrow. Carts could be little used in a country where 
there were no roads, or none but bad ones. Corn, when 
reaped, was heaped in a careless pile in the open air, to wait 
his leisure for threshing, which was performed, not by man- 
ual labour, but by the simple operation of cattle treading it 
out of the ear. He had no barns for stacking or storing 
grain, which was preserved, when required, in jars of un- 
baked earth, or baskets made of twigs or grass. The cattle 
wefe fed in the jungle, or common waste land adjoining his 
farm ; and buffaloes, thus supported, generally supplied him 
wuth milk. Horses were altogether unused in husbandry. 
The fields had no enclosures. Production was small, and 
the great landlord took one-half of the small amount, thus 
rendering improvement of machinery impossible. He could 
not buy looms and spinning-jennies, even if England would 
have sold them, which she would not. The necessary result 
was, that the poor manufacturer was first driven out of the 
market of the world, and then out of his own : and thus the 
small existing tendency to concentration was diminished. 
From being a consumer side by side wdth the producer of 
cotton, he was driven to seek elsewhere poor soils that he 
might scratch with his stick, in the almost vain hope of ob- 



INDIA. 401 

taining a sufficiency of food : and thus was the amount of 
raw cotton to be exported, increased for the supposed bene- 
fit of ships and factories owned by British capitalists, who 
heeded Httle the sufferings of the poor Hindoo weaver, de- 
prived of all market for his industry. Having thus com- 
pelled the use of the inferior machinery of exchange in the 
form of roads, in place of better machinery previously in 
use, the export of cotton now went on : but at length the 
people of the northern United States, driven to the poor 
soils of new states and territories to raise food instead of 
concentrating themselves on the rich soils of the old ones 
for the purpose of consuming it, forced the planter from the 
production of food to that of cotton with which he filled the 
world : and now the poor Hindoo could produce for Europe 
neither the raw material nor the cloth. Next, we find him, 
m default of other employment, largely engaged in cultivat- 
ing opium for his neighbours, the Chinese. The trade grows 
large, and Chinamen use it freely because cheaply supplied. 
The government takes alarm and destroys the opium, and 
England takes offence : and now Chinese cities are ruined, 
their men destroyed, and their women outraged, and the 
country is laid waste : that English subjects may employ in 
producing intoxicating drugs the labour that should be em- 
ployed in converting cotton into cloth, while the labourer ate 
food produced by the man who was to wear the cloth. 

The tendency of the whole system is that of compelling 
men to waste labour in transportation that might profitably 
be applied to production. Cotton and rice must go to Eng- 
land, that Englishmen may eat the one and fashion the 
other. Such being the law, it might be supposed that some 
labour might be applied towards perfecting, in some small 
degree, that description of the machinery of exchange the 
use of which was still to be permitted : to wit, roads and 
bridges : but the reader would greatly err who might sup- 
pose that possible. Of the vast revenues of that country, 
derived from the appropriation of one-half of the gross pro- 
3 E 34* 



402 INDIA. 

duce, scarcely a rupee goes back upon the land. We have 
now before us an account of all the works of improve- 
ment in that country, with its population of one hundred 
millions, during a period of seven years ; and it would be 
exceeded by the state of Rhode Island, with its one hun- 
dred thousand inhabitants. It is stated that the government 
does now do something : that it actually expends twelve or 
fifteen thousand pounds per annum in the repair of roads ! 
and that, too, in a country whose people are forced by erro- 
neous legislation over which they can have no control, to 
export its great product, because they may not be permitted 
to obtain machinery for fashioning it at home. The produce 
of the great cotton-growing districts on the Nerbudda is car- 
ried on oxen, each taking one hundred and sixty pounds, at 
the extreme rate, in fair weather, of seven miles a day. The / 
distance to Mirzapore, on the Ganges, is five hundred miles, 
and the cost is two and a half pence, or five cents, per 
pound. Thence it goes to Calcutta, a distance of eight 
hundred miles, by water, unaided, we believe, by steam. 
From another portion of the cotton-growing districts, in the 
Ueccan, the transport occupies a continuous journey of two 
months ; and in the rainy season the road is impassable, and 
the traffic of the country is at a stand. In the absence of even 
a defined road, the carriers, with their pack cattle, are com- 
pelled to travel by daylight to prevent the loss of their bul- 
locks in the jungles through which they have to pass, and 
this under a burning sun of from one hundred to one hun- 
dred and forty degrees. If the horde, sometimes amounting 
to a thousand, is overtaken by rain, the cotton, saturated 
with moisture, becomes heavy, and the black clayey soil, 
through which lies the whole line of road, sinks under the 
feet of a man above the ankle, and under that of a laden ox 
to the knees : and in this predicament the cargo lies some- 
times for weeks on the ground, and the merchant is ruined ! 
" Black clayey soils," rich and fertile, are here superabund- 
ant ; but the poor wretch who raises the cotton must culti- 



INDIA. 403 

vate the high lands that require neither clearing nor drain- 
age, and his masters take half the product of their poor soils, 
while refusing even to make a road through the rich ones : yet 
forcing him to send his cotton to market to be exchanged 
for cotton cloth manufactured thousands of miles distant. A 
system better calculated to compel men to continue culti- 
vating the poorest soils, by aid of sticks, could not be 
devised. 

We have here another of the leaks in this great vessel, but 
it is by no means the last. Of the revenues of this vast 
empire no small share is distributed among the infinite number 
of great men charged with the duties of government, who 
pay themselves liberally : for a very few years of " exile" are 
deemed to entitle each to acquire fortune for himself and his 
children. Salaries are large, and savings are considerable : and 
these savings are lent to the government to enable it to pay 
the salaries : for large as are the revenues, the debt grows 
regularly and rapidly. The lender, having accumulated a 
fortune and having safely invested it at large interest, now 
returns home, and thenceforth he is entitled to an annual re- 
mittance of the interest : and to pay him and others like him, 
and to make dividends on East India stock, almost twenty 
millions of dollars are annually required : a sum sufficient to 
make yearly a railroad of six hundred miles : and this is to be 
paid by men who think that they might perhaps continue to 
grow cotton, if in addition to bullocks they only had carts ! 

Within the last sixty years there has been levied on the 
poor Hindoos by and for the uses of that government, to aid 
it in making dividends, paying salaries, and carrying on wars 
in which, like that of Affghanistan, the poor tax-payers had 
no interest, more than five thousand millions of dollars ! In 
return for all this, the poor people have received at the hands 
of their masters neither roads, nor canals, nor public works 
of any description, except barracks, prisons, and hospitals 
for their own troops. Deprived of all power to improve their 
wretched machinery of production, they are compelled to 



404 INDIA. 

abandon rich lands, and cultivate the poorest : those from 
which the man who is destitute of a spade and an axe always 
draws his supplies of food. Such lands can afford no more 
than is absolutely necessary for the support of existence, yet 
of the miserable product the company takes one-half and 
calls it rent, and a large portion of the balance and calls it 
taxes. The necessary consequence is, that any thing like 
accumulation is impossible. Each year must furnish the 
supplies of the year, and when a failure of crop takes place 
the miserable people are swept off by hundreds of thou- 
sands. In the twenty years, from 1818 to 1838, there were 
nine years of famine. That of 1837-8 was terrific, yet the 
unfortunate people were surrounded by millions upon mil- 
lions of acres of the richest lands in the world that they 
could not cultivate, because the government left them no 
means. The rivers were choked with dead bodies in the pro- 
vinces where this very abundance of waste land existed ; the 
air putrefied with the stench of dead and dying human beings, 
and animals; the jackals and vultures were seen preying on 
the still animated bodies of our fellow-creatures. Mothers 
drowned their children by night, unwilling that the morning 
sun should witness their famishing state ; and whole families 
of respectability poisoned themselves, rather than beg a little 
rice for their support ; and, although a rupee's worth (half-a 
dollar) of grain would sustain a man for thirty days, hydro- 
phobia was becoming as prevalent as cholera ! 

In other quarters, the dead were lying in hundreds by the 
road-side, and it became necessary to form companies to 
carry them to the river, with a view to the prevention of pes- 
tilence. In Agra, the deaths were at the rate of ten thou- 
sand per month : and yet at this very period enormous sums, 
the proceeds of taxes imposed on these wretched beings, 
were being lavished on the war in Affghanistan ! 

So exhausted are these unfortunate people, that it becomes 
necessary frequently to remit the taxes, because of inability 
to collect them. No better evidence of their wretchedness 



INDIA. 405 

need be offered than the fact that in lower Bengal, one of the 
most prosperous portions of the Company's territories : that 
in which they have been longest and most firmly established ; 
the consumption of salt in three years, from 1834 to 1837, 
was less by one-fifth than it had been in the three years from 
1819 to 1822. Such is the necessary eflfect of a system that 
drives men from rich soils to poor ones ; and then refuses to 
supply even a defined road to the unfortunate cultivator, 
w^ho wovdd consider himself " rich indeed," if that road 
were made practicable for a cart, to enable him to drag the 
produce of his miserable soils through the rich black clay 
that lies between him and the far distant river. 

Throughout India, the class of native great men : those 
who live by the labour of others : is large. To them, how- 
ever, is to be added the whole body of their foreign masters. 
Till recently one of these latter who might have assaulted a 
native or ploughed up his land, could drag him to a distant 
city where the cost of litigation is expensive to a degree five 
times exceeding those of the courts of England, enormous 
even as they are. Officers of these courts accumulate im- 
mense fortunes in a few years, out of the substance of ruined 
suitors. At Madras the supreme court has, says Mr. Ma- 
caulay, fiilfilled its mission : it has beggared every rich na- 
tive within its jurisdiction and is inactive for want of some- 
body to ruin. Great men are very numerous, and their shares 
of the produce of the poor soils are always large. The la- 
bour of collecting their taxes is great, and they fix them- 
selves their reward. The system is the same wherever men 
are forced to rely upon those soils for food. The many are 
weak and disunited, and the few plunder them with im- 
punity. 

The Hindoo may well say that nothing is left him but his 
skin. He knows no freedom but to die : and yet he is the 
subject of England, whose people are furnishing the world 
with missionary bishops to teach Christianity ; the basis of 
which is, « Do unto your neighbour as ye would that he 



406 INDIA. 

should do unto you." He is the slave of the same men who 
look with "holy horror" upon the sugar of Brazil and upon 
the cotton of Georgia : the latter raised by men who are better 
fed, better clothed, better lodged, and better taught, than a con- 
siderable portion of the people of England itself. He is their 
slave ; for they will not permit him to combine his exertions 
with those of his fellow men, to render their joint labour pro- 
ductive. They will compel him to send food and cotton to 
Manchester ; that the latter may be twisted and woven, and 
then sent back to him. They will not permit concentration, 
without which the rich soils cannot be reduced to cultiva- 
tion : and until they shall be cultivated, famine and pestilence 
must continue to sweep off the population : and East India 
proprietors must continue to waste and destroy, annually, 
millions of bushels of salt, that they may be enabled to realize 
their dividends from selling the balance at a monopoly price 
to the starving wretch who labours one-half of the year to 
pay his rent, and one-fourth of the balance to pay for that 
salt. The ecorcheurs of France, who flayed the unhappy 
people engaged in the preparation of the great food-producing 
machine, were bad ; but those of England in India are worse. 
It is, throughout, a system of unmatched atrocity. Such is 
the condition of the men who raise the " free" cotton of 
India. 

Nearly a century has now rolled round, since, by the 
battle of Plassy, the ascendency of England in that great 
country was secured ; and such is the result. The Hindoo 
raises cotton, but he consumes only so much as will give him 
a strip to cover his loins. He raises rice ; but he eats little, 
for he may not even clean it : and all this is done that Eng- 
land may be the workshop of the world, and that great ma- 
nufacturers may accumulate millions by aid of the labour of 
over-worked and under-fed operatives. A system more self- 
ish and unsound could not be conceived ; nor could one 
more utterly destructive, both for herself and others, possibly 
exist. The results, everywhere, are the same : perpetual 



INDIA. 407 

change of system, and perpetual need of change. Canada 
stagnates : and governors and forms of government are 
changed, but Canada still remains motionless. Ireland 
starves, and Irishmen shoot agents : and curfew laws, and 
bills prohibiting the carrying of arms, are passed ; but Ireland 
still starves and borrows, and will not pay, because she can- 
not. Jamaica tries hill-coolies and free negroes : and coolies 
and negroes fail : and Jamaica still is poor. India cannot 
send cotton that will sell, and agents are sent to teach the 
poor Hindoo : who still cannot send cotton, because the rich 
soils are so abundant that his half-starved cattle, driven by 
their half-fed owner, cannot wade through them. Australia 
raises, on the poorest soils, a small supply of wool for which 
she must be paid ; while paying nothing for six millions of 
dollars annually charged to her account. English capitalists 
now propose railroads in India : but railroads never pay 
w^hen made for people who cultivate the poorest soils, and 
cannot themselves make roads. India will grow rich, 
and rapidly grow, w^hen India shall be independent, and 
shall protect herself against the radical error of the English 
system ; but until she shall do so : until she shall acquire 
power to place the consumer by the side of the producer : she 
must remain poor. In few countries of the world would 
population and wealth grow so rapidly, were she left alone : 
but so long as she must remit twenty millions to pay interest, 
and raise so many other millions to pay armies and officers, 
while compelled to cultivate the poorest soils with the worst 
machinery, neither can increase. England may change, and 
change again, abroad : but, before she can effect any im- 
provement, she must learn to look at home, and not abroad : 
she must abandon the use of temporary machinery and take 
to that which is permanent : she must raise her own food, and 
permit others to consume their own. She must increase her 
producers, and she must permit others to increase their con- 
sumers : and when she shall do that, India and Canada, 
Jamaica and Australia, will grow rich, while she will grow 



408 ' INDIA. 

richer : but she will then cease to want colonies, or armies, 
or fleets, or great men. In the annals of the world there is 
recorded no instance of self-deception greater than that which 
she now exhibits, except, perhaps, in that of France, who 
seeks dominion by aid of the sword alone, while she goes 
with sword and yard-stick. To which of the two should be 
awarded the credit of doing most to pi event the increase of 
human happiness, it might be difficult to decide ; but we are 
disposed to think that she would carry off the palm. France 
wasted the Palatinate with fire and sword. The work accom- 
plished, the armies were withdrawn. The poor people who 
were left breathed again : and, in time, they might restore 
their houses, and obtain fresh spades and ploughs to enable 
them to cultivate the rich soils. The yard-stick of England 
is a much more effective instrument. It produces famines 
and pestilences, recurring year after year, to sweep off all the 
population rendered surplus by the denial of the power of 
concentration. Her army is never withdrawn. The houses 
that it levels cannot be rebuilt. The spades and ploughs 
that it destroys cannot be replaced. The people 77mst go to 
the poor soils, and they must have famines to keep the 
population down to the supply of food that England permits 
them to produce. The Company are disciples of Mr. Mal- 
thus. They take rent for the use of the '<■ original and inde- 
structible powers" of a soil that possesses scarcely any power, 
and thus starve the population down to the level of sub- 
sistence. 

The PAST says to the people of England of the present : 
" I have sinned. I have beggared the people of India. I 
have taxed them until they have been forced to abandon the 
rich soils, which are now overgrown. I have applied the 
proceeds of taxes and contributions to the building of facto- 
ries that have enabled me to ruin their poor fashioner. I have 
driven them from making cloth to raising opium. I have 
destroyed the power of concentration. I have produced fa- 
mine and pestilence. I have converted people who were 



INDIA. 409 

free into slaves. I, too, have suffered. My people have 
starved, because Hindoos were unable to buy cloth, and food 
was dear. Take warning by my example. Apply your 
labour to the improvement of the great machine. Raise your 
own food, and permit the poor Hindoo to make his own cloth. 
Do unto them as ye would that they should do unto you, and 
let them govern themselves. They will then increase in 
numbers and in wealth, and ye will then increase more 
rapidly." 



3 F 35 



410 ANNEXATION. 



CHAPTER XIV. 



ANNEXATION. 



The people who cultivate the poor soils cluster round the 
hill-sides, and they are separated from their nearest neigh- 
bours by large tracts of rich soil covered with forests, and 
watered by broad rivers. With the growth of wealth and 
population the rich soils are brought into activity : and with 
each step the tendency to union is increased, and the nu- 
merous tribes ultimately combine to make one great, and 
rich, and powerful State. 

While the people of England cultivated the poor soils of 
the centre and south, the rich soils of Northumberland and 
Cumberland, and those of the south of Scotland, were occu- 
pied by a race of people, half-savage, to whom plunder offered 
employment more agreeable than labour : and a state of per- 
petual war was the natural result. With the growth of popu- 
lation and of wealth, the smaller tribe was annexed to the 
larger, and the kingdom of Great Britain was formed. 

For centuries France has been engaged in the work of 
annexation : but she has cultivated the poor soils, and failure 
has been the result. Piedmont has been repeatedly annexed, 
but annexation would not stand. Italy, and the Netherlands, 
and Holland, have been annexed : but the strong repulsive 
power of poverty again produced separation. She is now 
annexing Algeria: but the union cannot stand, for France is 
poor and still cultivates poor soils. 

Holland and Belgium were annexed, but the first loved 
ships, colonies, and commerce ; and foreign subjects : and 
looked abroad, while the people of Belgium desired to look 
to home. The one desired to cultivate the distant poor lands, 
while the other preferred the near rich ones. The Dutch 



ANNEXATION. 411 

were expelled, and Belgium adopted the measures necessary 
for enabling her people to concentrate themselves for the 
prosecution of the work of improving the great machine. 
She now advances rapidly in wealth and population, while 
Holland implores her flying citizens not to desert their country 
in its hour of distress. 

The British colonies are poor, and so they are likely to 
remain. Unable to protect themselves, they feel in all its 
force the perpetual vacillation of British policy. Concentra- 
tion for the cultivation of fertile soils cannot take place. 
The repulsive power is strong, and their connection with the 
parent country draws towards its close. From year to year 
new measures are adopted for their government. Slaves are 
bought and freed in the west, while slaves are being made 
in the east : and hill-coolies now cultivate sugar for their 
masters on the fertile soils of Berbice and Demerara, while 
the lately emancipated slave raises yams on the higher and 
more healthy land for himself. At one time slave sugar is 
prohibited, and arrangements are made for raising free sugar. 
At another, slave sugar is admitted, and the producer of free 
sugar is ruined. Thus is the system, internal and external, 
one of perpetual change, and ruinous to all that are intimately 
connected with her. 

Forced unions are effected, and general associations are 
now proposed, but at home the measures are the same. 
The mother country will buy food, and will pay for it with 
the produce of steam-engines and mills, instead of raising 
her own food and permitting the colonists to have mills and 
engines of their own. They must be made to continue to 
use bad machinery of exchange, and they must therefore 
continue poor. Annexation by the mother country is, there- 
fore, impossible, and separation must come. 

In the United States, we witness, at the present moment, 
the process of annexation on the north and south. On the 
one hand, the people who cultivate rich soils are rapidly 
annexing Canada by aid of the peaceful machinery afforded 



412 ANNEXATION. 

by increasing wealth. On the other, those who cultivate the 
poor soils of the south and west are striving at the annexa- 
tion of Mexico by the unprofitable machinery of war. The 
one is making friends and strength. The other is as busily 
employed in wasting its powers in making foes. The suc- 
cess of the one is certain. The failure of the other is almost 
equally so. The one pursues the mode that gave union to 
the few scattered colonies : that of honest labour. The other 
that which has in all times given to France disunion and 
weakness : that of arms. Canada will come into the Union, 
and Mexico most probably will not. The north will grow 
strong by peace, and the south will grow weak by war. 
The north concentrates its forces and places the consumer 
by the side of the producer, and hence her attractive power. 
The south sends the consumer to Mexico while the producer 
remains at home, and hence her repulsive power. In the 
north land is valuable, yet greediness of land has no exist- 
ence. In the south and west land is cheap and abundant, 
and hence the desire to have more land. If the south and 
west desire to have power or to retain it, they must study 
concentration and not dispersion. The more land they have, 
the weaker they become : while at every step in the growth 
of northern population, land becomes less abundant and 
strength increases. The love of land is the characteristic 
of the barbarian who cultivates poor soils. The love of 
man is that of the civilized man who cultivates rich soils. 
The one loves war and remains w^eak. The other loves peace 
and grows in strength. 

The expenditure of ten millions in placing the consumer 
of food by the producer of cotton and food, would double 
the power of the south. The expenditure of a hundred 
millions in adding Mexico to the Union will diminish that 
power in the same proportion : yet they will have wars, 
for throughout the south, in default of concentration, there 
are always found thousands anxious to manage the affairs 
of nations, having no business at home to demand their 



ANNEXATION. 413 

care. Hence it is that claimants for public employment 
abound at the south of Mason and Dixon's line, while in the 
land east of the Hudson they are few. The great men of the 
south seek public life. The greatest men of the north find 
more advantage in private life. The one furnishes the world 
with statesmen, generals, and colonels : the class of men who 
spend much and produce nothing. The other with mer- 
chants and manufacturers, who produce much and spend 
little. The one becomes rich, and with the rich man annexa- 
tion is easy. The other prevents himself from growing rich, 
and with him annexation is difficult. 

The United States need concentration and not disper- 
sion. Peacefully annexed, Mexico would do no harm, but 
she would not add materially to the power of the Union, or 
to the happiness of the people. She would gain much. 
They would gain but little, yet they would gain, for all na- 
tions prosper by the prosperity of their neighbours. With- 
in the Union, Mexico would speedily double her popula- 
tion, and that population would be as quiet and as indus- 
trious as any in the world. The people everywhere love 
peace, and everywhere they will labour, when improve- 
ment is felt to follow exertion. Their rulers alone love 
war. The peaceful annexation of Mexico would be a 
great work, but the accomplishment of that object re- 
quires spades and steam-engines, not swords and cannon. 
It w^ould be a great boon conferred upon the world. 
Southern Europe : France, Spain, and Italy : need an out- 
let for their people, desirous to escape from taxation and 
misrule, and w-ere Mexico a part of the Union, she would 
attract much of the best population of those countries; and 
would do much towards rendering man more valuable in 
the estimation of men who have land, and of those who 
exercise power. It would be a great work, and it is deeply 
to be regretted that the thirst for land should have produced 
a war that tends to prevent a measure so important for the 
improvement of the condition oiman. 

35* 



414 ANNEXATION. 

With the growth of wealth and population men cultivate 
better soils, and land becomes divided. With the division of 
land comes the union of man, and with union comes the 
power of man over himself, his thoughts and actions, his 
labour and its proceeds. With self-government comes peace. 
With peace, armies, and navies, and taxes, disappear. With 
each step in this course the attractive power increases, and 
the repulsive force diminishes, and the tendency to annexa- 
tion : or to the union of nations for the maintenance of the 
perfect freedom of man as a producer, a fashioner, or an 
exchanger : as a thinker or an actor : grows. With each, 
wealth and population tend more rapidly to increase, and 
with each, man becomes more and more a being of power, 
and less a victim of necessity. 

The PAST says to the people of the present : I have made 
war and preparations for war. I have kept on foot large 
fleets and armies, and have raised heavy taxes. I have pre- 
vented the growth of w^ealth and population. I have com- 
pelled men to cultivate the poor soils of the earth. I have 
prevented the division of land and the union of men and of 
nations. I have made the few strong and the many weak. 
Take warning by my example. Cultivate peace. Permit 
population to grow, and ye will cultivate rich soils. Wealth 
will then grow rapidly and land will be divided. Men 
and nations will then become united. Armies, and navies, 
and taxes, will disappear, and the many will become strong, 
W'hile the few will become weak. All will then exercise the 
power of perfect self-government, and all will learn to respect 
in others those rights they would desire to have respected in 
themselves. 



CIVILIZATION. 415 



CHAPTER XVI. 



CIVILIZATION. 



Civilization has, in all ages and countries, been found 
where men have accumulated wealth by means of which they 
have been enabled to subject to cultivation the rich soils of the 
earth ; and it has disappeared as they have been forced to 
abandon them and fly to the poor soils of the hills for safety. 
Concentration on the former is essential to the progress of 
civilization. With each step therein we have diminished 
machinery of exchange : physical and intellectual. Men ex- 
change more directly with each other the products of their 
mind and of their hands : and with each step production, 
material and intellectual, tends to increase. With the in- 
crease of material product, the proportion of the labourer in- 
creases, while that of land diminishes : and with each step, land 
tends to become more and more divided. With the increase 
of intellectual product, the machinery for the communication 
of ideas improves, and the labourer finds increased facility 
of obtaining knowledge, while the teacher obtains from a 
small contribution on the part of each of his readers or hear- 
ers a largely increased reward. Each step, therefore, in the 
progress of civilization is marked by a tendency to equality 
of physical and intellectual condition, and to the general 
ownership of wealth, whether in land or other machinery of 
production : or in the possession of books, pictures, statuary, 
or other things tending to promote intellectual advancement. 

With the division of land and the diffusion of weahh, the 
power of the few tends to diminish, while the number of per- 
sons interested in the maintenance of peace and in the enforce- 
ment of perfect security in the enjoyment of the rights of person 



416 CIVILIZATION. 

and property tends to increase ; and moral feeling improves, 
because of the increased facility of obtaining the necessaries, 
conveniences and comforts of life. Improvement and a ten- 
dency towards perfect equality of moral feeling are therefore 
characteristics of civilization. With each step in this pro- 
gress, jealousy and avarice disappear, and harmony and good 
feeling, and liberality of thought and of action, appear : ge- 
nerosity towards the weak takes the place of oppression : 
woman becomes the companion of man and ceases to be his 
slave : children cease to be slaves and come to be compa- 
nions : parents cease to be tyrants, and children respect and 
love them : and all, men, women and children, acquire the 
habit of self-government. With each step the necessity for 
the use of the machinery of government, public or private, 
tends to disappear, and with each the power of man to go- 
vern himself is seen to increase. With each, the cost of 
government decreases : and with each, wealth grows with in- 
creased rapidity, enabling man to bring into activity better 
soils, followed by a further increase in the return to labour, 
and facilitating further accumulation. With each, he acquires 
more and more the feeling of confidence in himself and in the 
future, and wdth each, he becomes more and more animated 
by Hope. With each, he learns more and more to appreciate 
the comforts indicated by the good old English word Home, 
and more and more to find in the great command to " do 
unto others as he would that others should do unto him," the 
guide of all his thoughts, his feelings, and his actions. 

Civilization is marked by elevation and equality of physi- 
cal, moral, intellectual, and political condition, and by the 
tendency towards union and harmony among men and na- 
tions. The highest civilization is marked by the most per- 
fect individuality and the greatest tendency to union, whe- 
ther of men or of nations. 

In the early history of Attica, the tendency towards civili- 
zation was very great, but the destruction of wealth and con- 
sequent deterioration of physical condition attendant upon the 



CIVILIZATION. 417 

Persian wars, was followed by a deterioration of moral and 
political condition. The people learned to live on the labours 
of others, while themselves the slaves of demagogues who 
distributed among their followers small wages, the proceeds 
of taxation and oppression ; and who employed their share 
of the plunder in creating gardens, and building temples, to 
hand down to admiring posterity their illustrious names. 
Individuals now give names to the times in which they live, al- 
w^ays a sign of declining civilization. The period most distin- 
guished by lust for power and " glory," and known as the age 
of Pericles, which owes its celebrity to men whose existence 
was one of the results of the previous age of peace and growing 
wealth, bequeathed to posterity Aristophanes, to whom we are 
indebted as the vivid painter of the vices of the "lazy, cow- 
ardly, talkative, and money-loving" tribe by whom he was sur- 
rounded. With each step downward the few become greater 
and more profligate. Generals plunder cities and betray their 
fellows-citizens. Great orators make speeches on one side and 
take bribes on the other, while the people become more and 
more impoverished and enslaved. Depravity and corruption, 
the necessary consequences of unceasing war and growing in- 
equality, become universal, and with the decay of morals we 
mark a steady increase of superstition and fanaticism, and all 
other of the characteristics of increasing barbarism. 

In early Rome we find a compliance with all the conditions 
of advancing civilization, but with each step in the progress of 
war and waste, we mark its decline. Great men have palaces 
filled with their poor and enslaved debtors. Scipio, Metellus, 
and others, form courts around themselves, wherein the arts are 
exercised and the sciences taught by slaves, while the streets 
of Rome witness exhibitions of captured princes and prin- 
cesses, followed by thousands of captives and the plunder 
of conquered nations ; and terminating in the execution, in 
cold blood, at the capitol, of all who might be supposed to pos- 
sess power to affect the future distribution of the spoils of the 
3G 



418 CIVILIZATION. 

world.* With each step in the downward progress, festivals 
and games become more magnificent and more brutal, and 
the people become more and more pauperized : the great 
men become greater, and the little men become less : until 
at length the exhausted empire becomes the property of bar- 
barians, and civilization disappears from the earth. 

In the history of France, we see little tendency towards 
civilization. Wealth could not grow, and man could not 
concentrate himself for the cultivation of the fertile soils : and 
therefore has he remained always poor and disunited. For 
want of roads, he has been unable to meet his fellow man 
for the exchange of physical or intellectual products : and, 
for want of a common language, he and his fellow man 
have been unable to correspond, or to understand each other 
if they met. t None of the conditions of civilization are here 
complied with. Everywhere we see inferiority and ine- 
quality of physical, moral, intellectual, and political con- 
dition. J 

M. Guizot regards France as <<the centre: the focus: of the 
civilization of Europe." That country is and has been, in his 
estimation, the great leader in European civilization, at the 

* In relation to this period, M. Guizot says : " Take Rome, for example, 
in the splendid days of the republic, at the close of the second Punic war ; 
the moment of her greatest virtues, when she was rapidly advancing to the 
empire of the world — when her social condition was evidently improving^ 

f German is even now the language of an important portion of the people, 
and the patois of one part of the kingdom is scarcely understood in another. 

:^ " The olficial returns of particular classes of the population, such as the 
conscripts and the convicts, recognise three degrees of ignorance and three of 
instruction. Taking these returns as the basis of our calculations, we find the 
following results for the whole of the population : — 

1. Unable to read and to write ... 16,855,000 

2. Able to read, but not to write - - . . 7,097,000 

3. Reading and writing, but incorrectly - - . 6,968,000 

4. Reading and writing correctly - - _ 2,430,000 

5. Having the elements of classical education - - 735,000 

6. Having completed their classical studies - - - 315,000 

34,400,000" 
France. London, 1844. 



CIVILIZATION. 419 

head of which, from its pecuHar quahties, <'it has been emi- 
nently quaUfied to march." 

To us, she appears in the Hght of the constant and un- 
wearied foe of civilization. To her was due the destruction 
of the Lombard kingdom of Italy, in which civilization was 
rapidly advancing. By her was Italy afterwards exhausted 
and delivered over to the ferocious Spaniard. By her have 
since been commenced all the wars that, from the days of 
Ferdinand and Charles V., have prevented any advance 
towards the improvement of the condition of its inhabitants : 
ever unfortunate in their proximity to poor neighbours, who 
saw in their wealthy cities, and in their treasures of art, 
plunder that they desired to appropriate. 

By her were the Netherlands and Holland ruined. To 
her are due the expulsion of the best citizens of both : the 
exhaustion of their wealth : the abandonment of rich soils, 
and the cultivation of poor ones : and to her is due the pre- 
sent enormous debt under which the industry of Holland is 
paralyzed. 

If we turn our eyes southward, the same picture meets 
our eye. Catalonia was advancing in civilization, and there- 
fore was it coveted. Therefore was it made the scene of 
ceaseless wars in which was destroyed enormous wealth, 
while the poor inhabitants were driven to seek from the poor 
soils of the hills the return to labour which the fertile soils 
w^ere no longer permitted to yield. Had France not existed, 
civilization would have spread throughout Spain : for had 
France not existed, the people who cultivated the poor soils of 
Spain could not have drawn from Italy the means of destroy- 
ing the civilization of those who cultivated the rich ones. 

If now we look towards Germany, we see France the 
perpetual enemy of the free cities : the perpetual ravager of 
the rich lands, and unceasingly engaged in their depopulation. 
To her intrigues was due the desolation of the Thirty Years' 
war. To her was due the control by the house of Austria 
of the passage of the Valteline, by means of which Spanish 



420 CIVILIZATION. 

troops from Italy were enabled to co-operate with those of 
the execrable Ferdinand in the destruction of the wealth of 
Germany : and in the establishment of unlimited control over 
the modes of thinking and acting of the people of Bohe- 
mia, till then ranking among the most civilized people of 
Europe. To her unceasing jealousy of Austria were due the 
perpetual invasions of her Turkish allies, by which all eastern 
Europe was impoverished. 

If we turn our eyes towards Genoa, or Venice, or Sicily, 
or Corsica, the result is the same. Wherever civilization 
endeavoured to raise its head, there were found French 
armies engaged in the work of its destruction. It could 
not be otherwise. France kept herself poor, and her peo- 
ple were driven to the cultivation of the least fertile soils : 
and hence they were always preying upon each other. 
Hence the barbarism of the Feudal System, which she in- 
flicted upon Europe : hence the horrors of the Jacquerie : 
hence the universal proscription of the industrious Hu- 
guenots : the atrocities of St. Bartholomew's night, and of the 
dragonnades : and hence the enormous mass of crime and 
misery that attended the Revolution. The tendency of 
every thing in France has been to produce poverty and ine- 
quality : and thus it is that we see such vast wealth side by 
side with extreme wretchedness. The few have been, and 
are, the controllers of the destinies of the people, who have 
had no voice in the regulation of their own actions : or in the 
disposal of the proceeds of their labour : or in the determi- 
nation of their modes of thought. 

M. Guizot informs us that, " as a general thing, in France, 
ideas have preceded and impelled the progress of the social 
order ; they have been prepared in doctrine before being 
accomplished in things, and in the march of civilization 
mind has taken the lead." Theories have certainly always 
preceded the accomplishment of «' things," and to the fact that 
it has been so it is due that the latter have made so little pro- 
gress. Knowledge is acquired from the study of the laws 



CIVILIZATION. 421 

of nature, and where those laws are habitually set aside they 
cannot be studied. They have been set aside, uniformly 
and steadily, in France ; and hence it is that «< mind" has 
taken the lead, and that laws have been manufactured by 
^reat men, who have " impelled the progress of the social 
order" in the direction that suited their purpose. The theory 
of the barons of the middle ages was, that they held their 
power from God himself, and that they had a right to make 
war on their own account : to exercise the droit de jam- 
bage et de cuissage : and to follow the serf and seize his per- 
son and his goods : most of which may be found reasserted 
almost in our ow^n day, by Montlosier. They held that " the 
liberties of the Gallican church" w^ere perfectly secured w^hen 
the right of nomination to all places in that church was in 
their hands, and when they could accumulate bishoprics with 
immense revenues in the hands of their bastards and de- 
pendents. They held, too, that " glory" was the great pur- 
suit of gentlemen, while labour w^as worthy only of slaves. 
France has alw^ays been the land of very great and very lit- 
tle men : of those who respected no rights in others, and 
could command from others no respect for their own. The 
great had no leisure to study the laws of nature, and the 
small were too poor and too miserable to have time or mind 
so to do. The starving man has no leisure to study any 
thing but how to obtain food. Wherever civilization has ex- 
isted, it has gone from below upwards : from the people w^ho 
minded their own business, to those who lived by managing 
the affairs of others. The great have always been the foes 
of civilization : while the small have been its friends. From 
the ranks of the people sprang Bacon and Locke, Shakspeare 
and Milton, Watt and Arkwright ; men to whom mankind 
are more indebted than to all the kings and princes the earth 
has seen. These men were observers of nature, and recorders 
of her modes of operation. They lived among a people ac- 
customed more than any other in Europe to permit the laws of 
nature to act : and there, and there alone, could her laws be 

36 



422 CIVILIZATION. 

studied. The essential difference between English and 
French mind is that one is based upon observation and the 
other is not, and therefore it is that in France " ideas" have 
been so numerous ; but there, as everywhere else, theory has 
been in the inverse ratio of knowledge. Theories in relation 
to Christianity most abounded w^hen its practice least existed. 
The immaculate conception was most ardently debated at 
the time when the Church sold absolution for the worst crimes 
at the cheapest rate. The theory of France, at all times, has 
been that her own grandeur was in ratio of the littleness of 
her neighbours : yet littleness has been her characteristic, in 
the field and in the cabinet. To that theory it is due that 
she has at all times made herself "the focus: the centre:" 
not of civilization, but of corruption and intrigue, and hence 
it is that she is dreaded by all the friends of freedom. She 
abounds now in theories. St. Simonianism and other sys- 
tems of forced union have their origin where the tenden- 
cy to voluntary union least exists. The advocates of each 
successive theory hold that they alone have the truth : and 
thus St. Simonianism is now persecuted,^ as Jansenism, and 
Molinism, and Jesuitism, have been in past times. Intole- 
rance towards freedom of thought marks her whole history. 
Theories of liberty have always abounded, because practical 
liberty has been unknown. Politico-economical theories 
abound, yet in no part of the world is the true political 
economy : that which teaches man to respect in others those 
rights of which he desires the enjoyment for himself: so little 
known. Theories of government, and constitutions, have 
been innumerable : yet government has always, and under 
every constitution, been administered for the sole benefit of 
those charged with the performance of its duties. The present 
theory of France is that Algeria will make her rich : yet she 
becomes poorer. Her great theory is, that power and influence 
are to be sought abroad, and she maintains great fleets and 
armies out of the taxes of a starving people : and then dis- 
tributes bread-tickets to half the population of Paris. Through- 



CIVILIZATION. 423 

out her whole system, past and present, every thing has been 
ii prepared in doctrine before being accomplished in things :" 
that is, the few have undertaken to teach the many, and they 
have made laws to suit themselves, instead of studying the 
laws that nature made. The consequence has been, that no- 
thing has been accomplished ; that French theories have been 
barren, as must be all that are not based upon observation, 
which cannot take place where practice does not exist. We 
are not aware, at this moment, of a single idea in moral or 
political science that is throughout the world received as true, 
for w^hich we are indebted to that country. Whenever she 
shall come to be a little practical ; whenever she shall have 
acquired a little knowledge of the science of self-government ; 
her theories of governing others will cease to exist : and 
whenever she shall arrive at that point in the progress of 
wealth when she shall cease to limit her cultivation to the 
poorest soils, voluntary unions may arise, and then the system 
of forced unions, whether for the building of forts, or the cul- 
tivation of farms, will pass away. The healthy man never 
studies the theory of disease or health. The sick man does, 
and the very sick man gives to it his w^hole time and mind. 
In no part of Europe is practice so unsound as in France. 
In none do theories so much abound : and in none, con- 
sequently, should we have a right to expect to find the 
body-politic more sick. In none should we find it so. In 
none is the tendency tow^ards civilization at home so small : 
in none is the tendency to the obstruction of civilization 
abroad so great. For centuries nearly all the wars of Eu- 
rope have had their origin in France, and at this moment her 
intrigues are the cause of nearly all the existing disturbances. 
The insular position of England has given her peace, and 
the laws of nature have there been far less habitually set aside 
than in France. Hence it is that she has given to the w^orld 
the great men to w^hom we have already referred : men who 
owed their knowledge to a careful study of nature and her 
laws, and to that labour which is required of every man who 



424 CIVILIZATION. 

desires to cultivate the richest soils, whether physic^.! or in- 
tellectual. 

In no part of Europe has the tendency to civilization been 
so great as in England : yet, if we now examine her condi- 
tion, the conditions of civilization are complied with in but 
a very limited degree. She uses much of the worst ma- 
chinery of exchange, that she may cultivate poor and distant 
soils while neglecting the rich ones at her feet : and there- 
fore it is that land remains undivided in the hands of great 
land-owners whose debts are counted by millions of pounds, 
while surrounded by labourers living in mud hovels, and 
earning 95. a week.* Here we have the civilization of Rome 
in the days of Pompey and Caesar : or that of Pomerania, be- 
fore the changes of the early years of the present century. 
Where such things are, true civilization has made little pro- 
gress. 

Neither can we see much of it in a system that enables 
great manufacturers to accumulate fortunes of millions of 
pounds out of the labours of the people who occupy the 
wretched cellars of Manchester : great ship-owners to do the 
same, while surrounded by the poverty and starvation that 
may be found in Liverpool : or great coal-proprietors, to fix 
monopoly prices upon coal mined by naked women and chil- 
dren, to enable them to accumulate fortunes at the expense 
of poor consumers in London. There is no civilization in 
the lanes and alleys of Glasgow ; nor in its numerous brothels, 
filled with the daughters of peasants who have been hunted 
out of their hills, until in the northern Highlands the poor 
remainder have degenerated into a meagre and stunted race. 
There is none in a system which exhibits throughout the 
western Highlands and the Isles, a population of from sixty 
to eighty thousand always in a state of destitution and ha- 
bitually dependent upon charity ; and compelled, in case of 

* The debts of one noble duke are stated to exceed two millions of pounds 
sterling: and those of another have been stated to require sixty thousand 
pounds for the payment of interest alone. 



CIVILIZATION. 425 

any deficiency of crops, to seek foreign aid to save them from 
the horrors of starvation. These poor people pay, for the 
use of very poor soils, high rents to men who live in pa- 
laces : great men : always the bane of little men. There is 
no civilization in starving Ireland ; none in India depopu- 
lated by starvation produced by enormous taxation for the 
support of great armies maintained for securing the sale of 
English cloths, or for the payment of interest on loans made 
to their masters by English subjects, and dividends on stock 
held by absentee landlords. 

So long as England shall continue to constitute herself 
head of a great empire, that empire must be considered as 
one in its whole length and breadth ; and her claims to rank 
in civilization must be weighed after an examination of the 
condition of her whole people : the powerful duke and the oc- 
cupant of the mud hovel: the great chief of the clan and his 
miserable tenant : the wealthy manufacturer and the poor 
operative : the Irish landholder and his starving tenant : the 
rich West India proprietor and his late slave : the East India 
proprietor and his present slaves, decimated, at brief inter- 
vals, by famine and pestilence. So considered, the claims 
of England to civilization do not stand high : nor can they 
do so while she shall continue to present to view such enor- 
mous contrasts. 

Half a century since, and perhaps even more recently, 
might be seen in the streets of Lisbon, men with good coats 
on their backs, cocked hats upon their heads, and swords by 
their sides, but with bare feet and legs. These men thought 
themselves civilized, and so does England : and the civihza- 
tion of the two is nearly alike. England has a very good 
coat, by which her body is well covered : but it has very 
short sleeves. The arms, to a great extent, are naked : and 
those arms represent a large portion of the people of England, 
badly fed, badly clothed, and very badly educated ; while 
surrounded by rich lands, great mills, well-endowed colleges, 
and vastly rich bishops and archbishops. Her body is well 
3 H 36* 



426 CIVILIZATION. 

covered, but her feet and legs, Ireland and India, are bare : 
and she keeps them bare, that she may have more to put 
upon her body : and she retains the sword by her side, that 
she may compel them to remain bare : that she may compel 
them to continue cultivating poor soils in sight of rich ones 
undrained because of poverty, and uncultivated because un- 
drained. In all this there is no civilization. 

In the United States, the conditions of civilization are 
complied with to an extent far beyond what elsewhere 
exists, and if they are not fully and completely so the cause 
is to be found in the fact that they cannot control their own 
actions.* So soon as they shall resolve that they will do so, 
they can place themselves at once at the head of all civili- 
zation. Massachusetts does now occupy that place, because 
she cultivates her richest soils ; but the whole nation may 
cultivate rich soils, when it wills that it shall be done. 
Then men will concentrate themselves, and the infinity of 
little schools will become larger and better schools, when 
children will be better taught at less cost. Then the vast 
skeleton of railroads and canals will be filled up with branches 
leading to every little town : and the little towns will become 
great towns, because land will increase in value from the 
great increase of the product and the diminished necessity 
for use of the machinery of exchange. Then land will be- 
come more and more divided : men will have large libraries 

* Perfect individuality and the strongest tendency to combination of action 
mark the highest civilization, and where they exist their effects will be seen 
in the events of war, as well as those of peace. However little we may be 
disposed to approve of the existing war, it is impossible to read the accounts 
of the recent proceedings in the valley of Mexico without being struck with 
the extent to which individuality and union have there been manifested. Gene- 
nerals, colonels, captains, and lieutenants, seem to be acting for, and by, them- 
selves, yet never was union more complete, and never was the wonderful 
power of union more fully exhibited. We seem to know each regiment, each 
officer, and almost each man. The perfection of individuality is seen in the 
election of a colonel on the battle-field, by the men whom he was to com- 
mand : and in the return of the name of every man killed or wounded, from 
the highest officer to the lowest private. The perfection of the power of union 
which accompanies this individuality is seen in the results. 



CIVILIZATION. 427 

instead of small ones, and the farmer will have his daily 
newspaper instead of his weekly one : and he will meet and 
exchange ideas with the consumers of his products : and his 
mind will become better informed ; and he will learn daily 
more and more how to manage his farm and to govern himself. 

Then will his wife become more and more exempt from 
the hardships of labour, and his children will marry and 
remain near him : and then he will learn daily more and 
more to appreciate the comforts of home : and he will more 
and more desire to render that home agreeable by the culti- 
vation of flowers and trees, and by the collection of books and 
of instruments calculated to aid him in the development of 
his intellect, and that of those by whom he is surrounded. 
Then will the consciousness of powder diminish, and the sense 
of his duty towards his fellow man increase : and then will 
he be seen daily more and more exerting himself to aid the 
afflicted and to help the weak : doing to all, and daily more 
and more, as he would that others should do unto him.* 

The PAST says to the people of the present: «< Civiliza- 
tion comes with wealth and the cultivation of the rich soils. 
With them come concentration, large wages, increased pro- 
ductiveness of land, and increased rents for the use of that 
land. Wealth comes with peace. Labour then for the main- 
tenance of peace." 

* Efforts have been made to show that crime is more abundant in the 
United States than in Europe. In the former, newspapers abound and every 
thing is published. In the latter, newspapers are few, and little is published. 
Archbishop Whateley says, and most correctly, that he has "no doubt that a 
single murder in Great Britain has often furnished matter for discourse to 
more than twenty times as many persons as any twenty such murders would 
in Turkey." He adds that " we should remember, that there are not more 
particles of dust in the sunbeam than in any other part of the room, though 
we see them more where the light is stronger." 



THE FUTURE. 



The population of the United States is at the present 
moment about twenty-one millions ; and the surface com- 
prised within the existing states and territories exceeds a 
million of square miles, or six hundred and forty millions 
of acres, each of which is capable, at a moderate estimate, 
of feeding a full-grown man : and were it properly culti- 
vated, it would clothe him too. The surface, then, that is 
already organized, is capable of maintaining six hundred 
and forty millions of people, or tw^o-thirds of the whole 
population of the globe : and yet men are seen, by thou- 
sands and almost tens of thousands, removing to Oregon and 
California to appropriate more land, of which they must 
cultivate the poor soils : while behind them are left fertile 
lands covered wdth the finest timber, almost utterly value- 
less ; as we have already shown. 

For the benefit of the rich lands from w^hich man thus flies, 
his predecessors have laboured during more than a century. 
For their benefit, they have made roads, railroads, and canals : 
have built houses, and towns, and cities : and he can pur- 
chase them, with all their advantages of timber and soil, at 
the price sometimes of sixty cents an acre — or one-tw^entieth 
of the interest they have acquired in these improvements : 
yet he flies from them to commence the work of cultivation 
upon poor land that has no value, and that can never ac- 
quire any but from the labour that he bestows upon it. 
He flies from rich lands that he may have at far less than 
cost, to obtain poor ones at full cost : and a heavy cost it is. 
He flies from lands that are covered with manure that has 

429 



430 • THE FUTURE. 

accumulated for ages, and that he may have for little more 
than the labour of clearing them, while men near towns pay 
thousands of dollars a year for the manure yielded by the pro- 
duce of poor lands cultivated by him and others like himself. 

The natural tendency of man is to combine his labours 
with those of his fellow man. He knows that two can roll, 
and four can lift, a log, that one alone could neither roll nor 
lift. Here, however, men are seen flying from their fellow 
men, each one seeking to roll his own log, for lift it he can- 
not. The labour of each is thus wasted on the road. The 
manure of his horses is wasted on the road : and his labour 
is unprofitably employed at the end of his journey. 

The natural tendency of man is to combine his axe with 
his neighbour's spade : lending one and borrowing the other. 
Here, however, the man with the axe flies from the man who 
has a spade. 

The natural tendency of man is to begin on the thin soil 
at the side of the hill, and to work down towards the rich 
soil at its foot, gathering manure on the one with which to 
enrich the other : but here man flies from the rich soils near 
him, to seek the poor ones distant from him. 

The natural tendency of man is to combine with his 
neighbours for improving old roads : but here man flies to a 
distance that he may employ his labour on new ones, while 
the old ones remain unimproved : and henceforth two are to 
be maintained instead of one. 

The natural tendency of man is to combine with his 
neighbours for improving the character of education in old 
schools : but here he flies from his neighbours to places 
where there are no schools, and where none can be until he 
shall build it himself. 

The natural tendency of man is to hold in regard old 
places and old churches, mellowed by time and sanctified 
by the recollection of those who had before inhabited them : 
but here he flies from them, to cut out new places in the 
woods, whose harshness and hardness are quintupled by the 



THE FUTURE. 431 

recollection of the places he has left, occupied by the friends 
of his early years. 

Why is this so ? Why is it that men should fly from 
western New York, where railroads run through rich 
lands, covered with dense forests : through swamps that 
need drainage alone to give to cultivation the richest soils 
in the world : to seek the West, where they must cultivate 
poor soils distant from market, and yielding but ten bushels 
of wheat to the acre, and that small yield, too, annually de- 
creasing* because of the necessity for starving the great 
machine, by wasting on the road the manure yielded by the 
horses or oxen employed in the work of transportation : 
while the wheat itself is consumed abroad, leaving nothing 
whatever to return to the land ? Why is it that throughout 
that rich country, with its canals and railroads, its towns and 
its telegraphs, population diminishes, and land concentrates 
itself in fewer hands : always the signs of diminishing 
wealth ? 

Why is it that men fly the fertile valleys and rich slopes 
of northern New York, near neighbours to both the St. Law- 
rence and Lake Champlain, where steamboats abound : to 
seek the shores of Lake Superior, there to obtain from the 
poorer soils that always must he first cultivated, a reward 
of little more than five times the seed ? Why is it that 
rich meadow-lands on the Schuylkill remain unimproved, 
while men seek Oregon and California ? Why is it that 
vast forests still cover fine meadow-lands on the Susque- 
hanna, capable of yielding crops whose tons would number 
more than the bushels obtained from the wheat lands of 
Ohio : furnishing manure in tons for fertilizing the poor soils 
of the hills, on which now stand farm-houses in the midst 
of farms that have been in cultivation for half a century ? 
Why do men seek Iowa, to raise from an acre thirty bushels 
of Indian corn, that before it can reach market must be con 

* See Report of Commissioner of Patents, January, 1815, p. 25. 



432 THE FUTURE. 

verted into pork, while the lower lands of Virginia and 
Maryland are abandoned : lands that are nearer to the great 
market of Europe, and from which, by careful cultivation, 
a hundred bushels might be obtained ? Why is it that men 
fly from the meadow lands of South Carolina, leaving the 
remaining inhabitants a prey to fevers and malaria conse- 
quent upon diminished population, to seek the thin lands of 
Texas, at the heads of the streams ; there to raise small 
crops to be wagoned over half-made roads down to new 
towns, possessing no one of the conveniences that tend 
so greatly to diminish the friction between the consumer and 
the producer ? Why is it that men are everywhere seen 
flying from their fellow men : from those destined by the 
Deity to be their helpmates : from parents and relations : 
from old houses, and old churches, and old school-houses ; 
old comforts, and old feelings : and from all the conve- 
niences and advantages that tend so largely to promote 
their happiness and their respectability, and to increase their 
powers of exertion : to seek in Texas and Iowa, Oregon 
and California, new homes and new relations, amidst woods 
that they cannot fell, and swamps that they cannot drain, and 
upon the poor soils that yield, invariably, the smallest return 
to labour ? 

These things would seem almost impossible : yet if we 
turn to India, we may see the poor Hindoo cultivating the 
poorest soils, and then labouring, almost in vain, to drive 
through the rich black clay that lies between him and his 
market, the half-starved cattle that bear his miserable crop. 
Here we have the same state of things ; and both here and 
there it may be traced to the same cause : necessity. In 
neither can men exercise power over the rich soils, because 
in neither have men power over themselves ; and until they 
shall have it, they must continue to fly from rich soils 
capable of yielding tons, by aid of whose manure poor soils 
might be enriched, to poor soils becoming daily poorer, be- 
cause to ^hera even the manure yielded by their own little 



THE FUTURE. 433 

product cannot be returned. They borrow from ihe earth, 
and they do not repay : and therefore it is that they find an 
empty exchequer; performing thus the process that farm- 
ers are enabled to avoid, when, as in England and New 
England, the consumer takes his place by the side of the 
producer.* Therefore it is that the average produce of New 
York is but fourteen bushels of wheat to the acre, while that 
of Ohio is even less, although acres may readily be made to 
yield forty or fifty bushels : and therefore it is that the ave- 
rage produce of Indian corn is but twenty-five, when it 
should be a hundred bushels, and that of potatoes but ninety 
when it might be four hundred bushels. 

If we desire to understand the cause of these extraordinary 
facts, we may perhaps obtain what we want by taking a 
bird's-eye view of a farm-house of western Pennsylvania, near 
neighbour to the rich meadow-land above described. The 
farmer is reading the newspaper, anxious to know what are the 
crops of England, and whether or not the rot has destroyed the 
potato crop in Ireland. Last year many of the people of Eu- 
rope starved : but he sold his crop at a good price, and paid 
off his debts. This year he wishes to purchase a new wagon, 
and to add to his stock of horses : but, unhappily for him, the 
farmers of England have had a favourable season, and the 
rot has not appeared in Ireland. Starvation will not sweep 
off its thousands, and he will get neither horses nor wagon. 

His eldest son is preparing to remove to the west, to raise 
wheat on dry lands in Wisconsin or Iowa, and to send to 
the already overstocked markets increased supplies of food. 
His daughter is grieving for the approaching loss of her 
brother ; and of her sweetheart, the son of the neighbour- 
ing wool-grower, who is about to leave for Michigan to raise 
wool, that he may compete with his father who is studying 
carefully the newspapers hoping to see that the sheep of Aus- 



* For the remarkable results produced by the proper application of 
manures, we would refer the reader to the account of a meeting at Drayton 
Manor, the residence of Sir Robert Peel, in Skinner's Farmer's Library. 

3 1 37 



434 THE FUTURE. 

tralia have rotted off and thus diminished the supply of wool. 
He wants to pay off his debts : but this he cannot do, unless 
the price of wool should rise, and thus increase the difficulty 
of obtaining clothing. Why do these sons move off? It is 
because there is no demand for labour. All the land is held 
in large farms because the poor soils alone are cultivated ; 
and farmers that would live at all must farm and fence in a 
great deal of land, where a dozen bushels to the acre are con- 
sidered a good crop. Why does he not clear some of the 
meadow-land? It is because there is no demand for milk, 
or for fresh meat : for hay, or turnips, or potatoes : or for any 
of those things of which the earth yields largely, and which 
from their bulk will not bear carriage. He knows that 
when the great machine yields by tons the product is worth 
little unless there be mouths on the spot to eat, but that when 
he restricts it to bushels the product may be transported to 
the mouths. There is no demand for timber; for all the 
young men fly to the west, and new houses are not needed. 
The timber is valueless ; and the land is not worth clearing 
to raise wheat, almost the only product of the earth that loill 
bear carriage. To clear an acre would cost as much as 
would buy a dozen in Iowa ; and the product of four acres, 
at ten bushels each, would be equal to one of forty. He 
therefore goes to the west to raise more wheat ; and his friend 
goes to raise more wool ; and his sister remains at home 
unmarried. Why does she not marry, and accompany her 
lover ? It is because she has found no demand for her labour, 
and has earned no wages to enable her to contribute to the 
expense of furnishing the house. 

Here, then, we have labour, male and female, superabun- 
dant for want of wages with which to buy food, and clothing, 
and houses : food superabundant, for want of mouths to eat it: 
clothing material superabundant, for want of people to wear 
it : timber superabundant, for want of people desiring to 
build houses : fertile land superabundant, for want of people 
to drink milk and eat butter and veal : and poor land super- 



THE FUTURE. 435 

abundant, for want of the manure that has for ages accumu- 
lated in the river bottom ; while the men who might eat the 
veal and drink the milk produced on rich lands, are flying 
to the west to waste their labour on poor ones : tliose who 
should he consumers of food becoming producers of food. 

Why is this ? It is because they want a market at which 
the labour, male and female : the food and the wool : can 
be exchanged for each other. They want a woollens mill, 
and had they this, the sons would stay at home and eat 
food, instead of going abroad to produce more. The 
daughters would marry, and would want houses. The 
timber would be cleared, and the fertile lands would be 
cultivated. The manure would be made, and the poor 
lands would be made rich. The milk would be drunk, and 
the veal would be eaten, and the swamps would be drained 
to make meadows. The saw- mill would come, and the 
sawyer would eat corn. The blacksmith, the tailor, the 
hatter, and the printer would come, and all would eat corn. 
The town would grow up, and acres would become lots. The 
farms would be divided, and the fencing of each diminished. 
The railroad would be made, and the coal and iron would 
come : and with each step in this progress, the farmer would 
obtain a better price for his corn and his wool, enabling him 
from year to year to appropriate more and more labour to the 
development of the vast treasures of the earth ; to building 
up the great machine, whose value would increase in the 
precise ratio of the increase in the return to his labour. The 
more he could take out of it, the more it would be worth. 

The good people of this neighbourhood now use bad 
machinery of exchange. They send to market annually five 
thousand tons of food and wool : a fourth of which is 
absorbed by the horses, and men, and machines, required 
for its transportation and exchange ; and thus they pay 
annually as much as would be required for the erection of a 
place of home exchange. The amount thus spent is lost 
for ever. The following year the same expenditure is 



436 THE FUTURE. 

needed : and the next, and every succeeding one. The 
same labour once applied at home, would stand ; and in the 
following year the wagons, and horses, and men would be at 
work upon the farms, clearing richer lands, and carrying 
manure to the old ones ; and with every year new combina- 
tions would arise : new and better lands would be cleared : 
new houses would be needed : new demands for timber 
would arise : new marriages would take place : new children 
would be born : and with each step in the progress of popu- 
lation and wealth, men would become richer and happier : 
and land would be more divided : and farms would be bet- 
ter cultivated : and schoolmasters and preachers would be 
better : and man would acquire more power over land and 
over himself. 

Let us now take a similar view of one of our planting 
friends in the south. His cotton is half picked, but early 
frost has come and killed the rest. Why is this ? He had 
not hands to pick it. Why had he not ? Because throughout 
the year there is no demand for labour. His best lands are 
uncleared, because there is no demand for lumber. His 
meadow lands are undrained, because there is no demand 
for milk or veal. He raises bushels of corn, when he might 
have tons of turnips or potatoes. He, too, wants a market- 
house. His neighbour is going west to the light soils 
of Texas, leaving the rich soils untouched. He is going to 
raise more cotton. If he stayed, he might be a consumer of 
corn, and cotton, and milk, and veal, and beef. 

If we now ask the worthy planter why he does not clear 
the rich land close to the poorer soil that he now cultivates, 
his answer will be, that he has offered twenty dollars an 
acre for clearing it, and destroying the timber, but in vain : 
nobody will undertake it. Nobody wants timber. There 
are no houses wanted, for his neighbours are flying to poorer 
and more distant soils. There are no railroad sills needed, 
for the production of the neighbourhood diminishes, and 
men will not make roads when such is the case. If we look 



THE FUTURE. 437 

in upon him at his hours of leisure, we shall find him intent 
upon the last news from England : desiring to know how 
many mills are closed : how many are working half time : 
how" many operatives have been discharged to starve : and 
wondering within himself if a time will ever arrive when it 
will be possible to calculate upon a continuance of the same 
state of things in that country during any single half year. 
If we look in upon him w^hen meeting with his neighbour 
planters, we shall find them discussing the expediency of 
restricting the culture of cotton ; or of holding conventions for 
the purpose of determining how much shall be grown, wdth 
a view to acquire some power over their own actions, and thus 
to diminish their necessities — but all in vain. Each succes- 
sive arrival brings with it the news of a further reduction in 
prices, yet no means can be devised to bring the supply 
dow^n to the demand : and yet his neighbour goes to Texas 
to raise more cotton. 

He and his neighbours send annually to market four thou- 
sand bales, of which a fourth is swallowed up by the men 
and horses and machines employed in the business of trans- 
portation and exchange. A thousand bales would build a 
market-house for labour, and corn, and cotton : and the new 
machinery of exchange would stand. Thenceforward, the 
produce of hundreds of these bales would go upon the land, 
and newer and better soils w^ould be cleared : and labour 
wotdd become more valuable : and w^ages w^ould rise : and 
men would marry, and houses would be needed, and chil- 
dren would be born : and land would become divided : and 
the planter would in time become the landlord of happy 
tenants, cultivating their own little farms for their own ad- 
vantage : and slaves w^ould become free, while their masters 
would become rich. 

If we desire to see this process in full operation, we must 
turn our eyes towards New England. The best soils are 
there cultivated, because there is a market on the spot for 
those productions which our great mother earth supplies in 

37* 



438 THE FUTURE. 

such profusion that they will not bear carriage. The Yankee 
can take tons from the land, and he can return tons of 
manure back to it, because he uses the best machinery of 
exchange. He concentrates his population by tens of thou- 
sands upon the poor soils of Massachusetts and Rhode 
Island, and there he consumes the corn raised by the people 
of the west, and places on his own thin soil the manure 
that they lose. His soils double in productive power, while 
theirs fall off. He becomes rich and richer every day, by con- 
centration. They remain poor, and then they scatter them- 
selves over new thin soils, to repeat in Iowa and Oregon 
the process of exhaustion already so well commenced in New 
York, Virginia, and Ohio. 

If w'e desire to see it elsewhere, we must turn to Eastern 
Pennsylvania. Population is there concentrating itself in the 
coal and iron regions : and what is the result ? She has 
ceased to be a corn-exporting State. Her miners now eat 
the wheat of Michigan and Iowa. Her farmers are now 
clearing richer land. Houses are needed, and mine-props 
are needed : and railroad sills are needed : and boat 
timber is needed : and in every spot, for fifty miles around 
the coal region, the farmers are felling their trees, which 
yield them the means of draining their meadows, while the 
demand for milk, and beef, and veal, and potatoes, and tur- 
nips, and all those vegetable products that the earth yields 
in greatest abundance, enables them to grow rich themselves 
and to make their poor soils rich. She has ceased to be a 
rival to Ohio or Wisconsin in the market of the world, and 
therefore their products are more valuable ; and with the in- 
creased value of their productions the planter of Mississippi 
and Alabama is enabled advantageously to devote more of 
his land to raising food, and less to raising cotton, the 
effect of which is found in the increased price of the latter. 
Were the mines to be discontinued : were the furnaces to be 
abandoned : her people would scatter over the west, to be- 
come producers of food instead of consumers, and then more 



Tilt: FUTURE. 439 

planters would raise cotton, and fewer would raise food : 
the result of which would be seen in the fall in the price of 
cotton. 

Such is the effect of a trade of six millions of dollars, the 
establishment of which has required fifty millions of dollars. 
A million and a half more would put up fifty furnaces, capa- 
ble of producing two hundred and fifty thousand tons of 
iron, the producers of which would eat as much food, 
occupy as many houses, and wear as much cloth, as those 
who have been set in motion by the fifty millions already 
expended. In the fashioning of the great machine, it is the 
first step that costs, and each is but preparatory to a new 
and greater one. 

Three millions more w^ould erect rolling-mills to convert all 
this iron into bars, and thus to produce a demand upon the 
farmer and the planter as great as is now produced by the 
fifty millions. 

Ten millions would build a hundred great cotton factories, 
furnishing a market for two hundred thousand bales of cot- 
ton, and five millions of dollars' worth of corn and clothing. 

The people who made the machinery and built the houses, 
would be consumers of corn and cotton, and not producers 
of either. They would want houses at home, instead of 
houses in Texas or Iowa. The demand for houses would 
make a market for timber. The demand for timber would 
clear the rich soils with profit to their owner, who would sell 
his trees instead of paying men for killing them. He would 
produce more food, and more people would come to eat it, 
and they would want more clothes, and more mills would 
be needed, and more stone, and timber, and lime, and clay, 
would be required : and with each step he would be improv- 
ing the great machine, while concentration would afford him 
means of improving his mind and his tastes, and of edu- 
cating his children. 

Six millions would build two hundred woollen factories, 
that would use thirty millions of pounds of wool in a year ; 



440 THE FUTURE. 

and distribute among farmers, workmen, and workwomen, 
twenty millions of dollars in a year, to be applied to the 
purchase of food, by which the farmer would be enabled 
to improve his better lands : of wool, by means of which 
he would be enabled to improve his breed, and increase 
his product : of timber, by aid of which he would be en- 
abled to clear his land : and of stone, by aid of which he 
would be enabled to bring his quarries into use : while the con- 
stantly increasing circulation of man and of machinery, and 
of their products, would offer large inducements to improve 
the roads by which he could transport to market the surplus, 
for which he would obtain better prices ; because population 
would increase far more rapidly than at present, and all 
would stay at home instead of seeking the wilds of the west *.- 
and the increased demand for labour throughout the country 
would enable all to consume more : and thus his powers 
when at market would increase as his necessity for seeking 
that market decreased. 

But is this all ? It is not. The future annual saving of 
the machinery of exchange would go again upon the land, 
and more would be raised, and wages would be greater, and 
the demand for houses and machinery would make a market 
for the labour of thousands, all of whom would themselves 
want houses, and all would consume more food and clothing 
than now : — and the quantity to be sent into the great market 
of the world would be diminished, and prices would rise. The 
farmer and planter would double their crops, while the ma- 
chinery of transportation would itself improve, and the loss in 
exchanging would diminish : and all would grow rich, and all 
would acquire more power over land, and over themselves : 
while their land would improve hourly in value. Their necessi- 
ties would diminish, and their power would increase, and as 
they made their own iron and cloth, and ate their own food, 
they would want more silks, and books, and newspapers, and 
pictures, and statues : and intellectual power would grow 



THE FUTURE. 441 

with physical and moral power, and thus would improve- 
ment keep pace with freedom. 

Why is not all this done ? Let us ask the farmer. He 
will tell us that cloth is sometimes high and sometimes low: 
that the woollen manufacturers have invariably been ruined 
by the perpetual fluctuations of England. Again, he will 
say that if he and his neighbour farmers desired to associate 
for the purpose of building a mill, they would have to be 
bound, each for all: and that they cannot get a charter, as 
there is no general law for that purpose, and the power freely 
to associate has no existence. 

Ask the planter. He will tell us that the cotton manu- 
facturers have been ruined over and over again : that cotton 
goods are sometimes high and sometimes low : that last year 
they w^re high, and that now England is forcing them into 
every market of the world :* that he has no charter, and that 
without this he and his fellow planters cannot associate ; 
whereas if they had a general law for the purpose, every 
man in the neighbourhood would subscribe a little, and that 
they might make an effort at concentration. 

* Of 175 mills in Manchester, there were working full time, September 
28, 1847, only 130 

At the close of the following week, the number had diminished to - 125 
In the first week the number altogether stopped was - - 23 

In the second, it was -------- -24 

In the first, the number working short time, was - - _ 23 

In the second, it was ------- -26 

The average number of hours was in the first but - - - 7J 

In the second it was reduced to------ -^^ 

In both, the number of persons working short time was about - 8000 
In the first, the number altogether unemployed, was - - 7654 

In the second, it had increased to - - - - - . 8736 

October 19, the number working short time had risen to 12,198, and those 
altogether unemployed to 10,341. The number unemployed in Lancashire is 
said to exceed 50,000. 

But a little while since, all were employed, and the labourers demanded a 
limitation of the hours of labour. Now, the employers reduce the hours, 
and the labourers suffer for want of employment. These changes occur in a 
time of perfect peace, and are produced by cuai.j^es of policy over which 
foreign nations have no control. They are destructive of the happiness, and 
comfort, and respectability, of the people of England, as they are of those 
of all her unfortunate subjects. 

3K 



442 THE FUTURE. 

Ask the farmer of Pennsylvania why he does not associate 
with his neighbours to erect a furnace, and his answ^er wdll 
be that three years since all the iron-masters were nearly 
ruined: that iron is now^ <£10 per ton, but that before a 
furnace could be built it would be down to £6, and their 
capital would be sunk. He, too, would say that charters 
were needed, and that charters could not be obtained. 

Here lies the secret of dispersion. Here is to be found 
the cause of the impossibility of concentration. The people 
of the United States have no power over their own actions. 
They waste annually more labour in hauling their products 
tomarket, and their consumers Jrom market, to the west, there 
to be employed in raising more food and cotton, than would 
build markets for themselves. They waste on the roads 
the manure yielded by the products of poor soils, and they 
leave on the rich ones the manure that has accumulated for 
ages, and that would render their poor ones rich; and w^hile 
they shall continue so to do, they must scatter themselves 
over the far west : they must leave home, and friends, and 
school-houses, behind : they must continue to be hewers of 
wood and drawers of water on the poor soils, instead of becom 
ing rich on the fertile ones : they must continue to obtain 
bushels w^here they might have tons : they must continue to 
do as do the people of India : — cultivate poor soils and find 
themselves bogged in the rich ones, through w^hich they 
have to drag their products to market. 

The annual loss to the people of the Union from the want 
of the power to concentrate themselves on the rich soils, is far 
more than the value of the whole exports of England to all 
parts of the world, and, were she to give them the whole, 
the gift would be injurious. It w^ould tend only to scatter 
the people more widely, for concentration would then be 
impossible, and without that the earth cannot he made to 
yield : and unless it be made to do so, the poor soils cannot 
be made rich. Population makes the food come Jrom the rich 
soils, while depopulation forces men back to the poor ones. 



THE FUTURE. 443 

The number of States employed in producing cotton is ten. 
The whole product is about two millions of bales, and the 
average is therefore about two hundred thousand bales per 
State. To prepare a State for producing that quantity, and 
the food that is to be consumed by the men who raise it, has 
cost hundreds of millions of dollars. To place in that State 
machinery requisite for its conversion into cloth would cost 
ten milUons of dollars, or less than the amount annually 
wasted : of labour for want of employment at home : of la- 
bour and manure in transporting the product to market : of 
labour and manure in transporting men to new lands: of crop 
from the want of hands to pick it : of freights, because of the 
increased demand for ships and wagons : and of prices, be- 
cause of the surplus in the markets of the w^orld : and less 
than half the amount annually wasted, because of the neces- 
sity for cultivating poor soils while rich ones lie idle. 

The cost of transporting the hides and the food to the 
shoemaker, his awl and his lapstone, is great, and all the 
manure is lost, and lost for ever. The cost of bringing the 
awl and the lapstone to the hides and the food is small, and 
all the manure is saved : and the great machine is improved, be- 
cause the manure is saved and the shoemaker v/ants a house ; 
and the house wants timber and stone, by the furnishing of 
which the land is cleared. A large portion of the people of 
the United States are busily employed in carrying the hides 
and the food to the awl and the lapstone, and in driving peo- 
ple who might use the awl to other places where they must 
raise more hides and food. 

What is the remedy for this state of things ? The answer 
is easy : England must be made to raise her own food, and 
she must be made to let other nations consume theirs. The 
resistance of the United States put an end to the navigation 
laws. Their resistance killed the right of search. Their 
resistance killed the corn laws. Their resistance will kill 
the colonial system, and give freedom to India and Ireland, 
to the people of England, and to themselves. 



444 THE FUTURE. 

To their resistance is due the fact that England has already 
turned her attention, in some degree, homeward ; but the 
work is not half done. To make a short war, it must be a 
strong one. No set of men can now feel any confidence in 
erecting iron- works, cotton-mills, or woollen-mills ; and un- 
til all shall feel full confidence, the little capitalists cannot 
get to work, and the business must remain in the hands of 
great ones, who can run great risks : and while that shall be 
the case, but little will be done. Almost all that exists in 
the Union is the work of the millions of little men engaged 
in improving the great machine, and when they, the little 
farmers, and little mechanics, and little shopkeepers, shall 
get to work, the production of iron, and of cotton and wool- 
len cloth, will go ahead as rapidly as farming has done, and 
then concentration will take place, and the rich soils will 
come into cultivation, and every county in the Union will 
have its iron, or its cotton, or its woollens exchange, and 
then land will double in product and in value. There 
is not one county that could not supply the stone, the 
limber, and the labour necessary for building a furnace or 
a mill, and the money necessary for the purchase of ma- 
chinery : thus making a place of home exchange. Once 
built, further capital is not needed. The grower of corn, 
and hay, and oats, and w^ool, and the young men and young 
women who have labour to sell, perform their exchanges at 
the factory, which becomes a little bank in which each man 
buys a share while accumulating means to build a house or 
buy a farm, selling it again when the house is built or the farm 
is bought. Throughout the Union, south of the Hudson, 
there is scarcely a single county in which there is not more 
capital unemployed than would build such a place of ex- 
change: and scarcely one in which, for want of such a place, 
there are not more people idle than would suffice to carry it 
on. Were each county to help itself, all Would be helped. 

Wealth is power. The people of the United States have 
the wealth. That wealth has given them power, dispersed 



THE FUTURE. 445 

as they were, to do much. Concentration will give them 
greater wealth, and greater power. Their twenty-one mil- 
lions produce at this moment a greater quantity of commodi- 
ties than the people of England, while they build twice as 
many houses ; make twice as many roads ; apply thrice the 
labour to the improvement of land ; build four times as many 
school-houses and churches ; and print ten times as many 
newspapers. The machinery of production is greater than 
that of England, and all they now want is better machinery 
of exchange. Let the farmers and planters have this and 
population will increase with greater rapidity than ever, for 
young men will stay at home and marry instead of going to 
the west ; and tens of thousands of mechanics, and of coal 
and iron miners, will seek the United States ; while labourers 
will come by hundreds of thousands, and every man will fur- 
nish a mouth to be fed, instead of, as now, furnishing hands 
to produce food. They will then be consumers of corn, and 
wool, and cotton, instead of producers : customers instead of 
rivals. Corn and cotton will be produced at less cost of 
labour, and wages in corn and cotton will be higher : 
while cloth and iron will be cheaper, and the farmer will 
cease to have to pray for bad crops in Europe : while the 
planter will find in the increased demand for his product 
consequent upon the higher wages of England, and of Europe, 
a certainty of a good market for all he has to spare. Coffee, 
and tea, and sugar, will then be paid for in cotton cloths, 
and the men who make the cloth will be customers to himself 
and to his brother agriculturists of the north, who will use 
more cotton than at present ; while Brazil and Cuba will want 
more cloths, because they will have a better market for their 
sugar. Every diminution in the machinery of exchange tends 
to give more time for improving the great machine of produc- 
tion, whether for cotton or sugar, wheat, rye, oats or hemp : 
to increase the quantity produced : to increase the w^ages of 
the labourer and the profits of the capitalist, landed or mo- 
neyed : and to increase the comfort and happiness of all. 

38 



446 THE FUTURE. 

Let but the people of the United States set the example of 
a determined resistance to the system, and it will be followed 
by all Europe. French artisans will then seek America and 
Germany, and France too wdll have to raise her own food. 
Her sw^ords will be changed for ploughshares, and her forests 
will disappear, while her coal mines will be opened. She, 
too, will learn the art of concentration, and with each step of 
her progress, the few will become less and the many greater. 
The people of the United States owe this to themselves, and 
to the world. They enjoy a higher degree of happiness than 
has fallen to the lot of any other nation, and they should de- 
sire to aid their fellow men in England, in Ireland, in Ger- 
many and in India, and by helping themselves they will help 
them. As colonies, India and Ireland will remain poor. 
As independent nations, they will become rich, for they too 
will insist on the right of placing the consumer by the side 
of the producer. 

Westward, the star of empire wends its way. From the 
west to the east civilization has gone, and so it has yet to go : 
from the base of the Alleghenies to the foot of the Himalaya. 
The measure is one of peaceful and quiet, but determined, 
and it should be of united, action. It is one that interests 

Every man that wishes to cultivate rich lands instead of 
poor ones : 

Every man that would raise tons instead of bushels: 
Every father that would wish to see his sons, and his sons' 
sons settle round him : 

Every mother that wishes to see her daughters married : 
Every son that would have a wufe and a home of his own : 
Every daughter that would have a husband : 
Every journeyman that w^ould be an employer : 
Every labourer that w^ould have a farm and house, or shop, 
of his own: 

Every property-holder that desires higher rents : 
Every man that hates crime and loves virtue : 
Every man that loves literature and art : 



THE FUTURE. 447 

Every man that loves freedom : 

Every man that loves the people of England : or of France : 

Every man that loyes Ireland : 

Every man that feels for India : 

Every man that loves his old fatherland, Germany : 

Every man that loves free trade : 

Every man that loves peace : 

Every man that loves his fellow man : 

Every man that loves his Creator : 

Every man that desires that the great law of Christ, " Do 
unto others as ye would that others should do unto you," 
should become universally operative. 

It is the great work reserved for the people of these United 
States, and they have the power to accomplish it. It should 
be entered upon with the same feeling that animated the Pu- 
ritans of old : the same that gave confidence to the men 
who, seventy years since, signed the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence. It should be preceded by a return to peace with 
an unfortunate neighbour, towards whom they now occupy 
the position of a strong man pummeling a weak one already 
on his back, to make him cry enough. That war has already 
cost more than would have given to every county in the 
Union a place for exchanging labour, corn, and cotton, or 
wool, or iron ore, for cotton or woollen cloth, or iron : and if 
it continue another year, it will cost at least as much more. 
They have too much land already. They want but concen- 
tration to enable them to become both rich and strong. 

For two centuries past, the world has been perpetually dis- 
turbed by the wars of England and France, for ships, colonies, 
and commerce. Had France had no colonies, there would, 
probably, have been no wars of the French Revolution after 
the failure of the invasion of 1792. But for them, France would 
have been permitted quietly to settle down, in which case 
Italy and Spain, Holland, Germany, and Russia would have 
escaped the war of twenty years, and France might now be 
rich, powerful, and free. The system of both nations is one 



448 THE FUTURE, 

of perpetual interference. At one time, Poland is to be ex- 
cited : at another, she is to be abandoned. At one time, 
Greece is to be aided : at another, Syria is to be delivered over 
to the tender mercies of the Egyptian pasha : at a third, China 
is to be made to buy opium, and to open her ports to the 
cloths of the men who have ruined the poor fashioners of India. 
At one moment, the affairs of Spain require the interposition 
of England : at the next, we see her fleets in Portugal, dictat- 
ing terms to people driven by oppression to revolt. At another, 
France governs Spain, and the country is made a scene of 
murderous war, while the court is one of endless intrigue, 
having for its object the promotion of the interests — not of 
France, but — of the family of Louis Philippe : all anxious, as 
French princes have at all times been, for appanages at home, 
and thrones abroad. For centuries has the European world 
been agitated, by the princes of the houses of Valois and 
Bourbon, and those of the house of Orleans are well dis- 
posed to follow their example. For two years past has all 
commerce with the La Plata been interdicted, because Eng- 
land and France chose to interfere in affairs that were not 
their own. They have failed, and the country is worse by 
two years of war and poverty. Three years since, the affairs 
of Texas claimed their attention. Now Switzerland is me- 
naced, while Italy, fearing France, looks to England. But 
a short time since, the people of the United States were to 
be compelled to join in a crusade against the slave trade ; 
which would soon cease to exist, were England and France 
to permit the world to remain at peace. At every difference 
of opinion as to rights, they are menaced with the destruc- 
tion of their towns and cities, and the seizure of their ships. 
At every quarrel, whether to maintain the trade in opium, or 
to put down that in slaves, their trade is interrupted. The 
two nations are everywhere seen meddling with everybody's 
business, and neglecting their own. 

They are the great bullies of the world. Italy would now 
be strong to help herself, but for the wars of France and 



THE FUTURE. 449 

England. So would Spain and Germany. Wars made for 
private ends are afterwards carried on for "the public 
good," and in defence of "the liberties of Europe," which 
will take care of themselves whenever the armies and fleets 
of England and France shall disappear, and not until then. 
Both countries should be placed under bonds to keep the 
peace ; and the peace-loving portions of the earth can take 
those bonds when they wall. Both should be made to turn 
their attention homeward : to raise their own food : to feed 
their starving artisans : to improve their own morals : to 
free their own people from the thousand restrictions under 
which they labour : and thus would they set to the world an 
example far more worthy to be followed than when they are 
seen preaching liberty and practising oppression : paying for 
slaves in the West Indies, and making slaves in the East by 
means of taxes on salt for the payment of dividends on India 
stock. Nations that pursue the natural system of concentra- 
tion will find that the first of all rules is the simple one, 
<« Let every man mind his owm business." The people of the 
United States possess the power of compelling both nations 
to follow this rule, for if they determine on the course that 
is essential to their prosperity, it wall be followed throughout 
Europe: and then fleets and armies must be abandoned, and 
colonies must be left to exercise the right of self-government. 
The <<true grandeur of nations" consists in the perfection 
of the self-defensive power : and that is now possessed by the 
United States in a degree greater than any other nation of the 
world. They have laid the foundation of a pyramid whose base 
is a million of square miles, occupied by twenty-one millions 
of people, and filledwath little communities, each with its little 
school-house, its church, and its newspaper. Each of these 
little communities occupies space sufficient for a large one, 
with its academy, or its college, its numerous churches, its 
newspapers, its bookstores, and its libraries, all aiding to give 
to the structure a height proportioned to its base : and that 
height may be obtained whenever the planters and farmers of 
3 L 38* 



450 THE FUTURE. 

the Union shall determine to exercise the right peaceably to 
defend themselves. Until they shall do so, concentration can- 
not take place. Until they shall do so, their people must con- 
tinue to waste their labour upon poor soils, yielding bushels, 
while neglecting rich ones that would yield tons. Whenever 
they shall do so, they will at once take the place to which they 
are entitled by two centuries of peaceful action, in which 
it is difficult to discover a single important error until the 
occasion of the present war : and we cannot but hope that 
they will speedily exhibit to the world a specimen of real 
greatness, in abandoning a contest for land that they do not 
want, with an enemy incapable of self-defence. They are 
strong, and they can afford to be generous. With England 
and with France lies the great contest, and it is for the exer- 
cise of power over their own actions : for the exercise of the 
right to stay at home and become rich by the cultivation of 
rich soils, in preference to flying from home to remain poor 
while cultivating poor ones : and every dollar spent in the 
present contest tends to lessen the power vigorously to main- 
tain that one which is to result in the emancipation of 
the world from the tyranny of fleets and armies, and the esta- 
blishment of perfect peace. The truest grandeur consists in 
the most perfect power over ourselves, our thoughts and ac- 
tions, and in conceding to all men the exercise of the same 
powers that we desire for ourselves. The people of the 
United States do not exercise that power : but they may do 
so, and we trust they will. Their position is one of sur- 
passing strength. They are twenty-one millions, among 
whom there is universal activity and intelligence. Of these 
seven hundred and fifty thousand are the product of the pre- 
sent year, and soon the addition of a year will reach a mil- 
lion. They have more school-houses and more scholars in 
them, more churches and more hearers in them, more pub- 
lic libraries and more books in them, than any other nation 
of the world. They have more and better printing presses, 
and they consume more paper ; and their authors are better 



THE FUTURE. 451 

paid.* They have a mercantile marine that can perform 
more service in a given time than any other. Their ma- 
chinery of manufacture now takes precedence of that of 
England. They have railroads, canals, and magnetic tele- 
graphs, over a surface of five hundred millions of acres. They 
have twenty millions of sheep, five millions of horses and 
mules, fifteen millions of cattle, and thirty millions of hogs. f 
They raise a thousand millions of bushels of food for man, and 
almost a thousand millions of pounds of cotton ; and this vast 
product can be doubled by the application of the same 
quantity of labour, whenever they shall determine that they 
will make their own cloth, and their own iron, and by 
thus placing the consumer by the side of the producer 
enable the latter to cultivate rich soils instead of poor ones. 
So soon as they shall have thus determined, thousands of 
tons of the surplus machinery of England, and tens of thou- 
sands of her artisans, will be seen leaving her shores to place 
themselves where food and cotton together grow, and where 
liberal and constant wages will be the reward of moderate 
but steady labour. 

England presents to view a pyramid, but an inverted one, 
the apex of which rests upon a vast population, a portion 
of which is uninstructed to a degree almost incredible, while 
another large portion is instructed in a very small degree ; 
and the whole are wanting in the activity which in the United 
States results from perfect self-government. Piled on these is 
a vast poor-house establishment with its host of officers. On 
this again stands Manchester : and on this rests a large mass 
of great merchants and bankers, trading largely on credit 



* We except from this the authors of such trash as " Le Juif Errant," 
and of histories whose object is to teach that " glory" is the great object of 
Ufe, and that it is to be sought at any sacrifice of honour or honesty. Such 
writers are better paid in France. 

j- Great Britain and Ireland, with a population of twenty-eight millions, 
have forty millions of sheep, two millions of horses, and five millions of cattle. 
France, with a [ opulation of thirty-five miUions, has thirty millions of sheep, 
three millions of horses, seven millions of cattle, and five millions of hogs. 



452 THE FUTURE. 

and but little on capital. On the top of this rest numerous 
great corporations making large dividends out of Irish rents, 
and taxes on the coal consumed by the artisans of London, or 
the salt eaten by the unfortunate people of India : or the pro- 
ceeds of high interest charged to unhappy traders and rail- 
road speculators seduced, by liberal offers of loans at low inte- 
rest, to risk their fortunes and their happiness upon the chance 
of an approach towards steadiness in the action of a great 
bank, that is governed by no principle but that of momentary 
expediency.* On top of this, we see a great Church collect- 
ing millions to be divided among archbishops, bishops, pre- 
bends, and rectors, while curates do the work and starve on 
servant's wages. Next, we see a great aristocracy, with vast 
possessions cultivated by men who live in mud' hovels and 
earn nine shillings a week ; and mortgages so heavy that 
record offices are held in small esteem and deemed to be un- 
desirable. Piled on this, Pelion upon Ossa, we have a fleet 
and army, and colonies, requiring a hundred millions of dollars 
annually for their support. Over all, stand the ministers 

* Five weeks ago, when money was selling in the market at 6 per cent., the 
managers of the Bank of England, having a great mass of that commodity 
accumulating on their hands belonging to the public, notwithstanding that 
their published weekly returns proclaimed that the value of money was 
steadily increasing, commenced underselling their rivals in the market, and 
offered their commodity at five per cent. The immediate effect of this extra 
issue was what is called "relief;" money was easier, traders obtained discounts 
rather more freely, and at a lower rate than before, property moved, and per- 
sons were tempted to accept contracts which they would otherwise have 
rejected. In the meanwhile, the weekly bank returns went on announcing 
that the stock of gold was diminishing, and that the natural value of money 
was enhancing, and such bystanders as ourselves awaited in breathless expec- 
tation the inevitable result of this terrific proceeding on the part of the ma- 
nagers of the bank. It came — those managers met one morning last week, 
and found that they had got no more money than the)'- should want for pay- 
ing the public dividends. They turned round in an instant upon the unfor- 
tunates whom they had been pampering with treacherous nourishment, Tas 
they had often done before,) and whom they had led and lulled into a fatal 
security, and, by a contraction and denial of loans more sudden, more perfidi- 
ous, and more remorseless than we ever before heard of, (but indispensably 
necessary to save themselves from the consequences of the criminal act of 
which they had been previously guilty,) plunged thousands into distress and 
hundreds into ruin. — Kxaminer, October, 1847. 



THE FUTURE. 453 

and great officers of state, surrounded by hosts of chancellors 
and ex-chancellors, pensioners, sinecurists, and recipients of 
the public moneys, of all grades and conditions of life, from 
the great Duke himself down to the tide-waiter and letter- 
sorter. 

The machine is top-heavy. It rests on the shoulders of 
the very poor : upon those of the little children and poor 
women of Manchester: and at the slightest disturbance there, 
it will topple over.* Such will be the case when the people 
of the United States shall determine that they will place the 
consumer of food by the side of the producer of food and 
cotton. That done, of all this vast mass little will remain 
but the land and the mortgages : and then machinery will 
become, as it has already somewhat done, superabundant, 
and much of it will find its way to America and Ireland, 
India and Germany. Mechanics and coal miners will be- 
come superabundant, and many will find their way to the 
United States. Capital, no longer needed in manufactures, 
will go upon the land, and food will become more abundant: 
and labour in agriculture will be more and more needed, 
and better paid ; because land-owners will find that they must 
offer bounties to men to stay, instead of granting premiums 
to those who will carry them into slavery in Van Diemen's 
land and Norfolk Island. Systematic colonization will be 
forgotten. Landlords will dispense w^ith great farmers, and 
manage their affairs themselves : and the return to capital will 
rise, because its employment will be directed by mind. 
Great farms will be broken into little farms, and little farms 

* The extreme unsoundness of the system is proved by the apprehensions 
felt by the government on every occasion of stoppage of work. The Britan- 
nia, of October 23, says, " The state of the manufacturing districts is so alarm- 
ing that government, though it refuses all measures of relief, is providing a 
strong military force to keep the peace. At Carlisle the local authorities have 
received warrants from Sir George Grey, the Home Secretary, authorizing 
them to call and enroll the pensioners of the district ; and a strong force of 
cavalry is now stationed at Newridge. No one supposes that the winter can 
be got through, should the distress not be mitigated, without some desperate 
rioting." 



454 THE FUTURE. 

will require cottages ; and land will be better cultivated, and 
pay more rent. Land will pay more taxes, and labour less : 
and landlords will cease to want fleets, or armies, or colonies, 
because they will dislike taxes. Landlord's sons will have to 
work, and landlord's properties will have to be divided. Titles 
will disappear. The price of perpetual annuities will fall, and 
the government will be unable to make loans.* Great bank- 
ers will break and little ones will take their place. The 
great will become less, and the little will become greater and 
stronger ; and all will become happier. Wealth will grow 
more rapidly, and wages will advance. Great corporations 
will die, and little unions will start into existence. Ireland and 
India and Germany will be permitted to eat their own food, 
and make their own cloth ; and England will sell them steam- 
engines and power-looms, while for a time she will send the 
people of the United States the finer articles that they will 
want in vast abundance when they shall have acquired power 
to make the commoner ones for themselves. 

The people of England are the friends of the people of the 
United States. They are part and parcel of themselves. 
To the aristocracy, landed, or moneyed, the latter owe 
nothing. They sent slaves, and because the people of the 
United States fed and clothed them well, and caused their 
numbers to increase, they branded them as << slave breeders." 
They seized the vessels of the United States by thousands, 
ruining their owners, and then reproached them as "bank- 
rupts." They forced the people to scatter to the west, and 
then forced loans upon them to make roads : then ruined 
them, and reproached them with <' repudiation." Time after 
time they have filled the western world with ruin, and ruin 
has invariably been followed by invective. To the7n, there 

* This operation is now going on in Germany as well as in England. 
The Austrian government has just prohibited the sale of railroad shares, in 
hopes of compelling capitalists to make investments in the worthless stock of 
a government by which repudiation has been repeatedly resorted to, to the 
ruin of all who have trusted it. The day of Austrian loans and power is 
over. 



THE FUTURE. 455 

is no friendship due. Their system is unsound, unsteady, and 
ruinous to the world, and to themselves ; and so will it con- 
tinue until the many shall have acquired more power, and 
the few shall exercise less. Their power hangs on fleets, 
and armies, and colonies, and when these shall have passed 
away order will succeed disorder and the world may hope 
for peace. 

With each step in this progress, England will acquire the 
power of self-protection, which now has no existence. Her 
policy is dependent upon that of foreign nations, and hence 
the endless waste upon diplomacy. Foreign tariffs affright 
her merchants, and compel the repeal of her corn laws. 
The fear of losing her supplies of cotton compels the aban- 
donment of the right of search, and the settlement of bound- 
ary questions. She has no fixed system, and she can have 
none : she can exercise in no degree the power of self- 
government while she relies on poor soils abroad in prefer- 
ence to rich ones at home. At this moment her whole policy 
is dependent on the action of the United States. If they de- 
termine that they will eat their own food, and work up their 
own cotton, and smelt their own iron ore, the downfall of the 
system of ships, commerce, and colonies is as certain to take 
place as it is now certain that the navigation and corn laws 
have been repealed. In confirmation of this view we take 
the following passage from an English journal : 

<^ It is a great mistake to date trading on reciprocity prin- 
ciples at the treaties of 1824 ; a still greater to suppose that 
the accession to these treaties by Great Britain was volun- 
tary, and that she had it in her power to resist them. The 
most indisputable fact is, that these treaties have each in 
their turn been as much forced upon us — that we w^ere as 
much driven into them — as if they had been dictated at the 
triumphant cannon's mouth. In 1815, after the long, exhaust- 
ing, desolating war with Bonaparte, Europe was only too 
eager to obtain any peace ; nations and governments forbade 
longer destruction, bloodshed, and misery ; and then in the 



456 THE FUTURE. 

peace concluded between Great Britain and America, the 
United States, by the articles which placed British and 
American shipping on terms of equality with each other, ex- 
acted such a recognition and establishment of the principles 
of reciprocity, that, w^hether they demanded it sooner or later, 
the concession of them could no longer be refused to other 
nations. In fact, the United States, by thus setting the ex- 
ample in this instance, as much abrogated our general naviga- 
tion laws, as, by resisting the search on the high seas, they have 
dealt the death-blow to that vexatious and presumptuous 
claim. For it was, and still is becoming • every day more 
and more apparent, that Great Britain, as a commercial nation, 
cannot wage a w^ar of custom-houses. To her, international 
retaliation of duties would be more fatal than defeat at Tra- 
falgar and Waterloo. Wherefore, the threat of custom-house 
hostility repealed our navigation laws — though our legislature 
went through the form of doing so, and though Mr. Huskis- 
son affected to originate it in 1824 in the House of Commons, 
as a necessary and prudential measure, when he announced 
the orders in council and the tariff on which the government 
had decided."* 

France presents to view another great inverted pyramid, 
resting on the shoulders of the miserable people of Paris, one- 
half of whom receive alms, in the form of bread tickets, when 
crops are short : and the equally miserable owners of millions 
of acres and half acres, cultivated by men who scarcely obtain 
the means of subsistence : and the more miserable operatives 
of Lyons and Sedan. The part which stands high in air, and 
which should be the bottom, is broad, and there we see the 
King busily employed in raising materials from below for the 
purpose of widening the top ; creating appanages and vice- 
royalties for his children, while all around are watching for 
the time when the whole machine shall topple over; burying 
in its ruins, king, princes, princesses, appanages , vice- 

* New Quarterly Eeview, p. 136, vol. 6, 1845. 



THE FUTURE. 457 

royalties, and all other of the bad machinery now so exten- 
sively in use. Let but the people of the United States de- 
termine that they will place the consumer by the side of the 
producer, and thousands of the most useful men in that 
country : great and little capitalists, and the best operatives of 
all descriptions : will transfer themselves to the place where 
labour is in demand, wages are high, and food is abundant.* 
Then will it become necessary to offer them inducements to 
stay at home : then will the people acquire power : and then 
may the world see an approach to peace, for the people 
everywhere love peace. Their rulers alone love war, and 
war abounds where man is cheap and food is dear. 

France and England are both hollow. With both power 
is apparent, not real, and both must lay down their arms 
when other nations shall determine that they will consume 
their own food, and that France and England shall raise their 
own. Wealth alone gives power. France is poor. Eng- 
land is apparently very rich, but far less so than she appears 
to be ; and no better evidence of the fact need be desired 
than is to be found in the general ruin caused by the appro- 
priation of a few millions' worth of land, and corn, and coal, 
and iron ore, to the purpose of making roads. She dams 
up capital, and w^hen it accumulates to the amount of eight 
or ten millions she fancies herself very rich, and commences 
the investment of twenty or thirty millions : and when the 
work is half done, half the merchants and traders are ruined, 
and half the operatives thrown out of work and obliged to 
expend their little savings in the effort to obtain food.f Such 
has been the course of events in every cycle of seven years 



* « Workmen ! we who are now tied, abused, chained — who have no rights, 
are not cared for ; no work, no bread, no future, as at present — let us go and 
seek elsewjaere, for the Providence or nature which offers us all the treasures 
of their love and beneficence. Let us go and make the foundations of Icaria 
on the American land." — Le Populairc. 

f The Times says, that "England is poor." England is veiy much less 
rich than the world is accustomed to believe. She wustes too much to be very 
rich. 

3M 39 



458 THE FUTURE. 

for the last half century, and such will it continue to be 
until she shall be compelled to raise her own food. Should 
the United States take the lead in the measures necessary to 
this end by adopting vigorous measures for the specific end 
of enabling themselves to dispense with the present cumbrous 
and wasteful machinery of exchange, adopting for it the 
cheap substitute that w^ould be afforded by placing the con- 
sumer side by side w^ith the producer, the close of another 
cycle of seven years would almost see the termination of the 
system. With its termination trade may become free: abso- 
lutely free : for in a natural state of things, those who pos- 
sess abundant supplies of food, the great raw material of 
manufacture, can need no protection. 

With each step in the progress towards that point, the 
people of Germany and Russia, and Spain, and Italy, and 
Ireland, will acquire power to consume more and more the 
food yielded by their own soil, on the ground on w^hich it is 
produced ; and with each they will acquire power to con- 
sume more clothing, for which they will require more cotton, 
to be paid for in those commodities for which their soils and 
climates are best fitted. With each, exchanges will be 
made more and more directly between the consumer and the 
producer, and the existing barbarous system of sending 
cotton to Manchester to be there spun for Germany and 
Russia; and food from Germany and Russia to be eaten 
by those who spin it ; will tend to pass away. With each, 
the planter wall produce his cotton at less cost of labour, 
and the cost of exchanging for the products of other por- 
tions of the world will diminish. With each, the power 
of the peace-loving portions of the world will grow, while 
that of the war-making portions will decline ; and with each, 
the power of man everywhere over land and over himself, 
his thoughts, his feelings, and his actions, will advance, with 
a steady tendency towards the establishment of perfect self- 
government. To the cotton planter this change is almost in- 
dispensable. So long as England shall continue to be the 



THE FUTURE. 459 

chief distributor of his great product, he can know nothing 
of self-government, for he must continue to be subject to the 
periodical revulsions with which that country is afflicted. At 
the present moment numerous mills are closed, not for want 
of orders but for want of means to execute them, and his 
cotton falls heavily in price because of his dependence upon 
Enghsh cotton manufacturers who are themselves dependent 
on the movements of English banks and English politicians. 
The intervention of England between the producer in Ame- 
rica and the consumers of the continent constitutes a cum- 
brous, costly, and wasteful portion of the machinery of ex- 
change, and the substitution of direct intercourse with the 
consumer would be attended with advantage similar to that 
which results from replacing the cart or wagon by the rail- 
road car. The more perfect the machinery the less is the 
friction, and the greater the power. 



Thus far, resistance to the great error of English policy 
has been in the form of tariffs having for their object the 
raising of revenue, and thereby affording incidental protection 
to the consumer of food, and cotton, and wool, who desires 
to place himself by the side of the producer. The system is 
vicious and unsound. It is part and parcel of that which it 
proposes to correct : of that which produces the depopulation 
of India, and compels the people of the United States to fly 
from rich soils to poor ones. 

When the government of England prohibited the export 
of machinery and the emigration of mechanics, the object 
in view was precisely the same that was sought in dis- 
couraging the manufacture of woollens in Ireland, and that 
of nails in America : in depriving the people of the southern 
provinces of this country of the right of Exchanging with 
those of the north, and the people of Ireland from exchang- 
ing with those of the West Indies, except through the me- 



460 THE FUTURE. 

dium of English ports and English merchants : that of esta- 
blishing a system of indirect taxation. 

How perfectly that object has been accomplished, we pro- 
pose now to show. The man w^ho raises cotton in India, 
receives less than one penny per pound for it. When it 
returns to him from Manchester in the form of cloth, after 
having been dragged through the ^<- rich black clay" that 
lies between him and the Ganges, it costs him certainly not 
less than four pence a yard. He gives," therefore, four 
pounds of cotton for one yard of cloth. A pound of cot- 
ton will make three yards of coarse cloth. With pro- 
per machinery, such as would be now in India but for. 
the determination of England to tax the world for the main- 
tenance of her system, a pound of cotton could be converted 
into cloth with less labour than is required for the produc- 
tion of the wool itself. Such being the case, a fair division 
would give the producer of the cotton at least one-half of the 
cloth, and he would receive a yard and a half for a pound, 
whereas he now gives for one yard four pounds. If we now 
add to this that because of the impoverishment that is thus 
produced he is compelled to fly from the richest soils of the 
world, and apply himself to the cultivation of poor ones that 
yield for wages but two rupees, or one dollar, per month, 
and for profits of capital but sixpence, or twelve cents, per 
acre,* we may be enabled to form some small conception of 

* " General Briggs states, that the greater portion of the soil in the districts 
ceded by the Nizam to the British government in ] 800, was the rich black 
land termed cotton ground. On the occasion of the survey, made between 
1803 and 1807, there were entered in one district only (Bellary) 1,460,993 
acres fit for producing cotton, of which 91 1,803 were in actual cultivation, and 
which, according to Dr. Wight's table of produce, in that part of India should 
have yielded 98,474,724 pounds: but in 1814-15, we find 740,845 acres had 
been abandoned, and that the produce of the whole district did not exceed 
6,278,000 pounds, instead of 98,474,724 pounds a few years before ; and 
strange to say, that the same public report shows that more cotton passed into 
and through the district in the same year from the remote districts of the 
Nizam, than was produced in the district alluded to. The cause of the falling 
off of the cotton culture under our government is but too apparent, for we 
find on the same authority, namely, the public reports of the revenue collector 



THE FUTURE. 461 

the extent of indirect taxation levied by England on that 
unfortunate people, and we shall be safe in placing it at 
more than twenty times the value of all the cloth and yarn 
produced in England from all the cotton wool grown in 
India, Egypt, and America. 

The poor Irishman is, by the system, denied the use of 
machinery, and he obtains one yard of cloth for the same 
quantity of grain or pork that would give him two, three, or 
four, if he could place the consumer by the producer. He 
too cultivates poor lands, and then he travels to England 
and spends half a dozen weeks in obtaining a fortnight's 
wages. What is the extent of the indirect taxation here it 
would be difficult to calculate, but it is quite sufficient to 
account for all the misery of Ireland. 

The planter in Tennessee sells his cotton for five cents per 
pound. By the time it reaches Manchester, it costs eight. 
He buys it back again, obtaining one yard of cloth for two 
pounds of cotton, whereas, if he had the consumer of food in 
his neighbourhood, he would obtain half the cloth yielded 
by his cotton, and would have three yards in place of one. 
He would then clear and cultivate rich soils, and wc'uld 
obtain a bale to the acre instead of half a bale, and w^ould 
sell his timber instead of wasting it as now he does. 

The farmer of Ohio sells his wheat, grown on land that 
yields ten bushels to the acre, at seventy cents. By the 
time it reaches Manchester it is worth a dollar and a half, 
at which price, with the addition of numerous charges, the far- 
mer buys it back : the result of which is, that he obtains for 
the produce of an acre of w^heat ninety yards of cloth, the 
produce of about thirty pounds of cotton, for which the pro- 
ducer in Tennessee has received a dollar and fifty cents, 
and which could be converted into cloth for as much more. 



in 1814-15, that the profit on cotton, according to his own estimate, Q*id not 
exceed six and a half-pence per acre, while, according to the native collector, 
whoso account is more likely to be correct, there was a dead loss in ordinary 
seasons of five pence per acre." — •Economist. 

39* 



462 THE FUTURE. 

He cultivates poor soils, whereas, if he had the consumer 
by his side, he might clear and cultivate rich ones that 
would yield forty bushels to the acre, and he too could sell his 
timber. 

What is the extent of indirect taxation upon the people 
of the United States by means of the system may perhaps 
be estimated if we take into consideration the following 
facts : — 

I. The labour annually expended in the construction of 
carts, and wagons, and ships, that would be unnecessary if 
the consumer and producer could be permitted to take their 
place by the side of each other, would produce as many 
mills and furnaces as w^ould convert into cloth half the cotton 
and wool produced, and smelt the ore for making all the iron 
used in the Union. To the carts, and w^agons, and ships, may 
be added the labour of horses and mules employed in the same 
wasteful w^ork. 

II. The time lost by the persons employed in the w^ork of 
unnecessary transportation and exchange ; by those who are 
idle in w^hole or in part for w^ant of a regular demand for 
labour ; and by those who are on the road seeking for new 
places of residence ; is more than would be required for the 
work of converting all the wool into cloth, and all the ore 
into iron. 

III. The labour that is now given to the work of cultivat- 
ing poor soils yielding ten bushels to the acre, instead of 
rich ones that are capable of affording tons of food by aid of 
which poor soils might be enriched, would yield double the 
return could the consumer take his place by the side of the 
producer and thus save the manure that is now wasted. 

IV. The labour that is now wasted in making and repair- 
ing roads through new states and territories, and among 
scattered settlements in both old and new states, if applied 
to the improvement of old roads would diminish annually, 
and largely, the cost of transportation of those portions of 
the products of the earth requiring to be exchanged. 



THE FUTURE. 463 

It may safely be asserted that the labour of man as now 
appHed is, on an average, but half as productive as it would 
be were it possible for the consumer and the producer to be 
near neighbours to each other, and if so, it follows that the in- 
direct taxation by aid of the colonial system is equal to the 
whole of the present product of the Union, which we have 
estimated at two thousand millions of dollars. If we wish 
evidence of the extent to which taxation is pushed by aid of 
this system, we need only to look to all the colonies of Eng- 
land throughout the world, Ireland, India, the West Indies, 
Canada, Nova Scotia, and South Africa, and we shall find 
exhaustion and depopulation universal, as it must continue 
to be wherever the power of self-protection has no existence.* 

* " Both from observation and reflection, I am convinced that a state en- 
tirely destitute of manufactures, vv^hatever may be the extent and nature of its 
staple productions, will always be inferior to one that combines manufactural 
industry with agricultural wealth. In the first place, materials to a very large 
amount, which might be worked up to advantage, but which will not bear the 
cost of distant transportation, are wasted for want of neighbouring manufactures. 
In the next, it is destitute of those towns and villages that grow up around such 
establishments, affording home markets for the produce of the farmer, more 
advantageous than those at a distance, and supplying him with necessary ar- 
ticles at a cheaper rate, the price being diminished to the amount of the cost 
of transportation. Again, manufactures greatly increase the productive re- 
sources of a country ; the use of steam and water power, and the vast num- 
ber of mechanical contrivances and labour-saving machines set in motion by 
them, augment to an almost indefinite extent the productive industry of the 
country ; while every discovery in science applicable to the useful arts which 
manufactures give rise to, adds still further to its wealth. It is true that 
the application of science to agriculture has increased its products, and that 
we have some few labour-saving machines, but how few and insignificant are 
they when compared with those that multiply a thousand-fold the industrial 
capital of a manufacturing district ! Where manufactures exist, the indivi- 
duals interested in their success and prosperity, from their proximity to each 
other, easily unite their efforts for all purposes of common interest, and good 
roads and canals result naturally from such combinations, and convenient lines 
of communication are everywhere established, so as to give to each one his 
fair share of the advantages of trade. We, on the contrary, live far apart, and 
meet but rarely to take into consideration our common interests ; and when 
we do meet, we remain together too short a time to originate or perfect any 
great measure of general improvement. In purely agricultural districts, there- 
fore, the products of industry find their way to market by miserable roads and 
circuitous lines of communication, to the great loss and inconvenience of the 
farmer." — PoinsctL's Jddrcss to the South Carolina State Agricultural Society. 



464 THE FUTURE. 

The benefit to the man who plunders towns is small com- 
pared with the injury inflicted upon those who are plundered. 
So is it with taxation, direct or indirect. The amount produced 
is small when compared with the loss that is caused by com- 
pelling men to cultivate poor soils, when they might have rich 
ones were they enabled to improve their machinery of cultiva- 
tion. England gains nothing by this course of action. While 
thus taxing all the world to an amount almost inconceivable, 
she pays heavily herself. She drives capital from employment 
that would be profitable to that which is unprofitable — from 
the cultivation of her own soil to the fashioning of the pro- 
ducts of other soils — and the consequence is that the profits 
derived from its use are less by more than one-half than they 
would otherwise be. She drives labour from the profitable 
to the unprofitable, and wages are also less by one-half. 
Capital is cheap and governments borrow readily for the 
purposes of war ; and man is cheap while food is dear, and 
therefore men are readily hired for the purpose of keeping in 
subjection the people of England, Ireland, and India, while 
undergoing the operation of having extracted from them a 
large portion of the small wages they are permitted to earn. 
The system is unnatural and unsteady, and therefore it is that 
her workmen are often unemployed by tens of thousands, 
while at other times they are overworked : and therefore too 
it is that her neighbours are perpetually ruined by its unceas- 
ing instability. 

To the unsoundness of the system it is due that through- 
out the world protective tariffs exist, having for their object 
the exclusion of British manufactures. Nothing less could 
have introduced the system of protection into these United 
States. Everywhere, however, it has been attempted to cor- 
rect error resulting from the effort by England at indirect 
taxation, by other error in desiring to use tariffs as a means 
of similar taxation at home. It has been the substitution 
of plunder by a pickpocket for that of a highwayman. The 
whole system of indirect taxation is mere petty larceny. It 



THE FUTURE. 465 

is an attempt to filch that which cannot be openly demanded. 
It is one of those "inventions" of man by which the few 
are enabled to grow rich at the expense of the many, and is 
therefore greatly favoured by that class of men who prefer living 
by the labour of others to living by their own. The man who 
plunders a city is of the same species with the highway rob- 
ber. The one who imposes indirect taxes is of the same 
species with the chevalier dHndustrie. All belong to the ge- 
nus of great men. All are equally destitute of manly or 
generous feeling. The plunderer of cities selects those which 
are weak and defenceless, and the collector of indirect taxes 
selects the commodities used by poor men who cannot de- 
fend themselves, and where the system most prevails men 
are most w^eak and cheap, and food most dear. 

In India it is found in perfection. The Company taxes 
princes and sovereigns by millions, and through them their 
subjects. It then seizes on salt, and retails it at a profit 
of from eight hundred to fifteen hundred per cent. Next, it 
taxes commodities on their way to and from market, wher- 
ever they can be found, and then hands over its poor subjects 
to the tender mercies of judges, generals, captains and lieu- 
tenants, zemindars, mundils, potails, and all others o^ihe. genus 
Avhose/br^e lies in picking pockets with dexterity. 

France has always been governed by financiers, stock- 
jobbers, and other members of the same great family, and 
there the system is carried to greater perfection than else- 
where in Europe. The government takes all that can be 
obtained by direct taxes, then seizes on salt, tobacco, and 
all other of the commodities used by little men, and then 
leaves them in charge of innumerable subordinates engaged 
in abstracting from their pockets by taxes at the gates of 
towns, monopolies, interest upon innumerable mortgages, 
and endless fees to lawyers, most of the little that is left. 

England exhibits the same system on a grand scale. The 
nation taxes the world, and each portion of it that exercises 
Dower is engaged in the same great work at home. That 
3N 



466 THE FUTURE. 

portion which calls itself «« The State" seizes on sugar, and 
coffee, and tea, and all other of the commodities used by 
little men, and thus levies contributions that could not other- 
wise be obtained. The land-holder picks pockets by aid of 
corn laws. Railroad kings plunder the unhappy traveller by 
high fares, and hereditary legislators pick his pocket by 
doubling the cost of making the road. Lawyers oppose 
local courts lest they should diminish fees. The Bank makes 
loans at two per cent., and renews them to the almost ruined 
debtor at nine. The city of London taxes transportation by 
seizing on the poor carter and taxing his cart, that he may 
contribute to the Lord Mayor's dinner. The number en- 
gaged in the work of indirect taxation — in that of picking 
pockets by aid of monopolies and restrictions — is great, and 
the business appears to be profitable ; but it is one that, 
like all other of the modes of plunder, yields small return 
to the capital and labour that are employed. 

Where highwaymen are numerous, pickpockets will always 
abound. Where wars are frequent, indirect taxes will be 
numerous, and the people will be poor. The people of the 
United States, happily, have preserved peace more steadily 
than other nations ; the consequence of which is found in the 
fact that indirect taxes are fewer, and the class that lives by 
the labour of others is smaller than in other parts of the 
world. In the south and west, where poor soils are cul- 
tivated and land is held in large quantities, many modes of 
indirect taxation may be found. Some States own banks, 
and others make canals and railroads, by aid of all of which 
taxes are collected from the many to be expended by the 
few. Pennsylvania presents to view a considerable class 
that lives by the labour of others, and various modes of pick- 
ing pockets by aid of indirect taxation have been there in 
use. With the gradual substitution of direct taxation, the 
class is becoming less numerous, and soon we may hope to 
see it disappear. In New Jersey, we find an ingenious 
compound of highway robbery and petty larceny. The 



THE FUTURE. 467 

State sells to a Company distinguished for its rapacity, the 
exclusive privilege of transportnig passengers and merchan- 
dise by railroad between the two principal cities of the 
Union ; the consequence of which is thp.t they are worse 
accommodated, at higher cost, than in any other part of 
the country where the same amount of business is done. 
The Company puts the pistol to the head of the traveller, 
and the State picks his pocket of its fee. The nation is thus 
taxed to the amount of millions by means of the money that 
is thus extorted, and by vast interferences with trade and 
travel. The State itself loses, because high freights pre- 
vent the clearing of its land which remains in many places 
a wilderness where it should be a garden : and thus at the 
cost of millions it acquires a revenue equal to little more 
than one cent per acre of its surface. 

New York makes canals, and then, to avoid laying direct 
taxes, imposes a tax on all merchandise carried on rail- 
roads, with a view, apparently, to prevent the clearing and 
drainage of its best lands, w^hich yet remain in a state of 
nature. Here we find the practice of petty larceny on an 
extensive scale. That the State may borrow money cheaply 
by reason of its obligations commanding a high price in the 
market, its creditors are invested with a monopoly of furnish- 
ing that species of currency that men most desire to use, to 
wit, bank notes ; and by aid of this grant they are enabled 
to impose heavy taxes upon those who use them, by paying 
them out at par and buying them in at a discount : whereas, 
were the trade in money free, notes would be supplied that 
would be always, and everywhere through the State, at par. 
That trade has in all ages been found by legislators, whether 
hereditary or elective, to afford a convenient mode of picking 
pockets, and therefore it has been kept always under their 
especial care, and where most cared for the robbery has in- 
variably been greatest. Here, however, the system is likely 
soon to see its close, for here the people have acquired an 
increase of power. 



468 THE FUTURE. 

New England is, more than any other part of the world, 
free from this system of plunder. Massachusetts expends 
two millions, all of which, with the exception of a very in- 
jurious tax on bank stock, and another on sales by auction, 
is honestly taken in the form of taxes demanded directly from 
the owner of the property himself. The people there culti- 
vate all their soils. They know what they pay for, and 
they receive value for their money. The pickpocket collec- 
tor of indirect taxes has little existence there. 

In the government of the Union, on the contrary, the sys- 
tem of indirect taxation is universal. The forms it assumes 
are different at different times. Sometimes duties are speci- 
fic, and the honest man then pays no more than his dishonest 
neighbour. At other times they are ad valorem, and then the 
pickpocket, by aid of a false invoice, collects his share of the 
indirect taxation by paying less duty than his honest neigh- 
bour. The few who employ themselves in managing the 
affairs of the many : those who trade in politics : have availed 
themselves of the necessity for protection against the per- 
petual and enormous error of the English system to establish 
revenue tariffs with incidental protection, and thus to swell 
the amount of taxes to thirty millions of dollars, by aid of 
which armies of officers, civil, military, and naval, are sup- 
ported, and wars are made, and loans are effected : whereas, 
were the system of direct taxation once adopted wars would 
become impossible, for no chief magistrate would dare to re- 
commend one for which the people w^ere to be required to 
pay down in taxes upon their lands, their houses, and their 
merchandise. 

' As we pass from the north and east, the land where popu- 
lation is most numerous and land least abundant, to the 
south and west, where land most abounds and men cultivate 
the poorer soils, the love of war increases, and wars flow from 
indirect taxation. If we desire to diminish the love of war 
we must diminish the power of the few to impose such taxes. 
That power is greatest where men are most scattered, and 



THE FUTURE. 469 

every increase in the tendency to depopulation tends to in- 
crease that power, while every increase in the tendency to 
concentration tends to its diminution. If we wish, then, that 
the whole people shall become as rich, and strong, and free 
and peaceful, as the people of Massachusetts, we must place 
the consumer by the side of the producer in Pennsylvania, 
Virginia, South Carolina, and other States, and thus enable 
the latter to cultivate rich soils, instead of compelling the for- 
mer to fly to Oregon or Texas, there to become himself a pro- 
ducer, cultivating poor ones. 

Concentration, even to its present extent, cannot be main- 
tained without protection. To repeal even the existing tariff 
would be to drive to the west, there to raise food from poor 
soils, the men who now cultivate rich ones, and with each 
step the power of the few to obtain large revenues by indi- 
rect taxation, and the power to make wars, would increase. 
If we desire to preserve peace, we must arrest the progress 
of depopulation and promote concentration upon rich soils, 
and that can be done only by increased protection, by aid of 
a tariff that is not for revenue — a tariff whose direct object 
shall be that of establishing the right of every man to deter- 
mine for himself where he will live, and how he will employ 
his labour, or his capital, or both. What is needed is a dis- 
tinct declaration of a determination on the part of the whole 
nation, farmers and planters, to pursue the course necessary 
for bringing the consumer of cotton, and wool, and food, to 
the side of the producers of those commodities : for bringing 
the lapstone to the hides and the food, instead of carrying the 
hides and the food to the lapstone : and thus to terminate the 
system of indirect taxation by both England and France, and 
to annihilate, by means of measures of peaceful but vigorous 
resistance, the power of those countries to disturb the world 
by means of fleets and armies. Were such a measure once 
deliberately adopted as the policy of the whole nation, eva- 
sion of its provisions would be impossible, for all, males and 
females, old and young, rich and poor, land-owner and la- 

40 



470 THE FUTURE. 

bourer, would feel that their own interests were directly con- 
cerned in their enforcement. All would feel that the object 
in view was the establishment of their own right to cultivate 
rich soils instead of poor ones, and to receive large wages 
and large rents instead of small ones. The example once 
set and its object distinctly avowed by the United States, it 
would be followed by every nation in Europe, and then capi- 
tal, in the form of machinery, would be seen travelling to 
place itself by the side of the food, the cotton, the wool, and 
the iron ore, and mechanics and labourers would seek the 
lands w^here food was cheap and man was dear. A brief 
period of determined action would suffice to restore the equi- 
librium, now disturbed, between the demand for, and the 
supply of, both labour and capital in England and France. 
Both w^ould cease to be superabundant, and landlords would 
be found paying high interest for the one, and high wages 
to secure the services of the other. The effort then would be 
to retain both at home, and contrivances for expelling them 
would pass out of use. Food would become cheap, while 
man w-ould become dear, and the power to maintain large 
armies would soon cease to exist. Labourers would then 
vote, and then taxes would be laid on land : and then fleets, 
and armies, and colonies would pass out of existence, while 
custom-houses would be turned into factories. 

In a natural state of things, the people of the United 
States can manufacture more cheaply than any nation of the 
world. The mechanic wants food, and lodging, and cloth- 
ing. The first they have in vast abundance, and the mate- 
rials for the others equally abound. All that is wanted is 
that the shoemaker wdth his lapstone shall be permitted to 
take his place by the side of the hides and the food, as he 
would long since have done but for the existence of a dis- 
turbing force of prodigious power, that needs now a decided, 
and vigorous, and united, exertion for its correction. So long 
as it shall be permitted to exist, depopulation and the sys- 
tem of large revenues raised by means of indirect taxation, 



THE FUTURE. " 471 

to be squandered by those who live by managing the affairs 
of others, must continue. So long as it exists, the planter 
and farmer must continue to cultivate poor soils instead of 
rich ones, and to give a large portion of their small product 
in exchange for a small quantity of clothing. So long as it 
exists, every attempt at the establishment of freedom of trade 
must be a failure. With its correction, every obstacle to the 
establishment of perfect freedom will disappear, and the 
tariff* will pass out of existence. Its enactment w^ould be a 
declaration of war for the establishment of peace and free 
trade, and when the object of the war should be attained a 
continuance of hostilities would be found unnecessary. 

The interest of every farmer and planter, and of every la- 
bourer and mechanic, is directly concerned in the adoption of a 
measure of this kind, and one that shall be calculated promptly 
to produce the effect desired ; but it is not more his interest than 
it is his duty. So long as the present system shall endure, 
trade of every kind must continue subject to the violent fluc- 
tuations which enable the few to enrich themselves at the ex- 
pense of the many, and enable gambling speculators to live 
in palaces and ride in coaches by aid of the indirect taxation 
levied upon the hard-working mechanic and honest trader 
ruined by changes in the value of their property. So long as 
it shall continue to endure, usury laws must continue to exist, 
whereas, when trade shall once be permitted to take its natu- 
ral course, it wdll be found that of all commodities money is 
the one that tends most to permanence of value. So long 
as it shall endure, England will continue to maintain expen- 
sive establishments on barren rocks that she may be enabled, 
by aid of the smuggler, to set at defiance every effort at con- 
centration on the part of the people of Spain, Italy, and Ger- 
many, and so long must false invoices and perjury character- 
ize the whole of her foreign trade. So long as it shall en- 
dure, the people of the United States must continue to bar- 
barize themselves by flying from friends, relatives, school- 
houses, and churches : those of Ireland must continue to 



472 THE FUTURE. 

shoot landlords and landlord's agents : and those of India to 
play the part of assassins, under the name of thugs and 
phansigars. It is therefore the bounden duty of every man 
desirous to promote the great cause of morality, of justice, 
and of truth, to unite his efforts with those of his neighbour 
for the early accomplishment of the great object. 

But, it may be asked, what will become of the revenue ? 
Tariffs for revenue should have no existence. Interferences 
with trade are to be tolerated only as measures of self-pro- 
tection. Every man who enjoys security should contribute 
directly for its maintenance, and then he would have cheap 
government, and good government. With every step in the 
progress towards placing the consumer by the side of the pro- 
ducer there would be diminished necessity for the mainte- 
nance of costly missions and expensive negotiations, and the 
trader in politics would have diminished chances of profit or 
distinction. Great men would become less, while the little 
men : those who minded their own business : would become 
greater. With the abolition of British and French fleets and 
armies the necessity for maintaining American fleets and 
armies would diminish and finally pass away, while the 
power of self-defence would increase, by the concentration of 
population and increase of means of intercourse. Men would 
cease to disperse themselves so widely over the west. Colo- 
nization would proceed naturally, and colonists would cease 
to require forts or troops to defend them, because they would 
be strong in union with each other, and because they w^ould 
cease to press so heavily upon the poor natives of the forest. 
Trade with the consumers of cotton, and of other of the com- 
modities produced in the Union, would increase as those con- 
sumers were more and more enabled to consume their own 
food, and the power to maintain ships would increase as the 
necessity for dependence upon them diminished. The ocean 
would be covered with steam-ships capable of defending 
themselves, and also capable of being converted into ships 
of war should war occur in self-defence, but wars would 



THE FUTURE. 473 

cease. The people everywhere love peace, as will be fully 
shown when the system of indirect taxation at home, and 
that of ships, colonies, and commerce abroad : the systems 
which great men patronize : shall have seen their end, a 
consummation devoutly to be wished. By degrees expor- 
tations of food would cease, except in the form of cloth, 
or yarn, or iron, or other manufactured commodities : and 
importations would become limited to those commodities for 
which the climate was unsuited, or those finer articles on 
which small duties could alone, under any circumstances, 
be levied, of which the consumption would be vastly in- 
creased, to the improvement of both knowledge and taste. 
Revenue and expenditure would fall together, and ultimately 
it might, and we think would, prove that five millions of 
dollars would more than suffice for all the necessary expenses 
of a people of thirty millions, while the product of those 
thirty millions would be more than double that of the pre- 
sent twenty-one millions. That sum would be equal to one- 
sixth of a dollar per head, and it might be raised without 
the necessity for a single revenue officer of the general 
government. With each step in the progress of diminu- 
tion in the quantity of the machinery of exchange, its qua- 
lity would improve, and men would travel by thousands 
where now go hundreds ; their power of locomotion, and 
their disposition to see the world increasing as the necessity 
therefor diminished : and ultimately it would be seen that 
in a natural state of things man and machinery move, and 
food tends to stay at home : whereas, in Europe, where he is 
kept poor, it is held that man is the most difficult of all 
commodities to be moved. Man and machinery can afford 
to pay high freights, while fuel and food must be carried 
cheaply, or not at all. The increased transport of the former, 
and more valuable, commodities, would tend to give perfect 
roads and perfect ships, and both man and machinery would 
travel at far less cost than now. 

The first and great desire of man is that of maintaining and 



474 THE FUTURE. O^ 

improving his condition. With each step in the progress of 
concentration, his physical condition would improve, because 
he would cultivate more fertile lands, and obtain increased 
power over the treasures of the earth. His moral condition 
would improve, because he would have greater inducements 
to steady and regular labour ; and the reward of good con- 
duct would steadily increase. His intellectual condition 
w^ould improve, because he would have more leisure for 
study, and more power to mix with his fellow men at home 
or abroad ; to learn what they knew, and to see what they 
possessed ; while the reward of talent would steadily increase, . 
and that of mere brute wealth would steadily decline. His 
political condition would improve, because he would acquire 
an increased power over the application of his labour and 
of its proceeds. He would be less governed, better go- 
verned, and more cheaply governed : and all because more 
perfectly self-governed. 



Note. — We take the following from the last (October) number of the 
Edinburgh Review: — "If we are unjust enough, and insane enough, to 
allow a combination for retaliatory measures of this description to be once 
formed, there is no knowing to what purposes it may not be afterwards ap- 
plied. One of our greatest perils is the universal jealousy of our commercial 
power. We would piously hope that our legislators may be just, and fear 
not. But we must be just. Retaliation, once entered upon, will not be con- 
fined to Europe. The United States of America are never backward in press- 
ing their supposed interests, and in extorting privileges from others. We now^ 
export to those states large quantities of the produce of every region. Our 
trade with America involves a hundred interests, of which, if our cotton ma- 
nufactures are the greatest, they are but one. Let the legislature of Washing- 
ton pass a Navigation Law, in all respects the counterpart of our own ! We 
need say no more. B ut we are shocked to think into what a condition the fol- 
lowing out of our example would bring the world." 

The time has come for the people of the United States to insist upon the 
enjoyment by their ships of every right conceded to those of England, and the 
people of the continent of Europe are fully prepared to second them. The 
time has come for the abolition of the system of indirect taxation by whicTi the 
nations of the world are compelled to contribute towards the maintenance of 
fleets and armies employed in disturbing the repose of the world, and the 
more vigorous the measures the sooner shall we see arrive the sera of universal 
peace and universal freedom of trade. 

THE END. 

LE D '09 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




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